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QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 

S3 — The Tariff and its Evils ; or, Protection which does not Protect. 
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54 — Relation of the Tariff to Wages. By David A. Wells. Octavo, 
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and Shipping Subsidies and Bounties. By John Codman. 

65 — A Tariff Primer. The Effects of Protection upon the Farmer and 
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67 — The Question of Copyright. Edited by G. H. Putnam . i 75 

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70 — The Question of Silver. Revised edition. By Louis R. Ehrich. 
Paper, 40 cents ; cloth . . . . . . . . 75 

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QUESTIONS OF THE DA V. No, XLIII. 



SLAV OR SAXON 



A STUDY OF THE GROWTH AND TENDENCIES OF 
RUSSIAN CIVILIZATION 



WILLIAM DUDLEY FOULKE 



THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 

XTbe IRnicficrbocher Press 

1904 



DKu 



Copyright, 1887 

BY 

WM. D. FOULKE 



TEbe IRnlcfierboctier ipress, 1Re\o l^otb 



o 



^ 



PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 

When the first edition of this study was issued in 1887, 
my statement of the aspirations of the Muscovite Empire 
to universal dominion was received with great incredulity, 
and sarcastic observations were made by critics regarding 
the Gargantuan meal which Russia proposed to make of 
the rest of the universe. When the second edition ap- 
peared in 1898, such critics had become silent, and since 
that time the aims and tendencies of Russian civilization 
have become so generally known that statements which 
seemed impossible when this book was originally pub- 
lished Qiay now seem superfluous. 

Some important events, however, have occurred since 
the edition of 1898. The evasive diplomacy and broken 
promises of Russia in regard to Manchuria and Korea 
have had their natural result in the outbreak of the 
war with Japan, while the perfidy of Russia towards 
Finland in withdrawing the constitutional guarantees 
sanctioned by the oath of every Czar since 1809; the 
removal from that country of the last vestiges of civil 
liberty, and the exile of the most distinguished Finnish 
citizens for venturing to protest against the overthrow of 
their political and civil rights ; the acts of injustice and 
outrage committed against the Jews of Russia; and the 



iv Preface to the Third Edition. 

arbitrary appropriation by the Russian Government of 
the property and control of the Armenian Church, have 
reinforced so conclusively the original argument of this 
book that the author is constrained to add these new 
matters in Chapters VI., X., XL, and XII., as well as to 
make a number of not very important corrections in the 
original text. It is believed that the volume, as it now 
stands, offers a reasonably accurate statement of the 
Russian question down to the outbreak of the war with 
Japan. 



PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 

The certainty of the coming conflict between the Slav 
and the Saxon, which was foreshadowed in the edition of 
this work pubHshed in 1887, has become more generally- 
apparent during the past year, owing to Russian intrigues 
in China ; while the cordial friendship between England 
and America, which has grown up during our war with 
Spain, has made possible the union of American and 
English influence for the protection of our common civil- 
ization against the encroachments of autocracy. 

The time therefore seems opportune for issuing a re- 
vised edition, bringing down to the present moment the 
existing facts relating to the coming struggle, a struggle 
which seems certain to involve in its results the destiny 
of the whole human race. 

W. D. F. 

Richmond, Ind., Dec. i, 1898. 



Among the publications to which I have been under 
obligations, are " L' Empire des Tsars et les Russes," by 
Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu ; Rambaud's " History of Rus- 
sia"; Stepniak's " Russia under the Tsars," " Under- 
ground Russia," and "The Russian Storm Cloud"; 
Vamb^ry's articles in the Nineteenth Century entitled 
" Will Russia Conquer India ? " ; " The Russians at the 
Gates of Herat," by Charles Marvin; Tissot's " Russes 
et Allemands," Wallace's" Russia," and Dixon's" Free 
Russia"; also "China in Transformation," by A. R. 
Colquhoun, articles of Stanley, Hallett, Younghusband, 
and others in the Nineteenth Century ; " Finland and the 
Tsars," by J. R. Fisher ; " The Russian Advance," by 
Albert J. Beveridge; and an article of Geo. Kennan on 
" The KishinefT Horror," published in the Washington 
Star on January i6, 1904. The literature upon the sub- 
ject is comprehensive, and I have drawn freely from many 
sources, but more especially from the foregoing. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I 



I. — The Coming Struggle . 

II. — The Territory of Russia 
III, — The Russian People 
IV. — The Military Autocracy 

V. — Russian Conquests and Aggressions 



VI. — Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea 55 



VII. — The History of Russia . 
VIII. — The Reforms of Alexander II. 
IX. — The Despotism of Alexander III. 

X. — Finland 

XI. — Armenians — Jews — Russian Ideals 
XII. — Our Own Interest and Duty 



10 

20 

35 
42 



88 
122 
138 
158 
189 
200 



SLAV OR SAXON. 



CHAPTER L 

THE COMING STRUGGLE. 

It was said in an article published in the SL Petersburg 
Novoe Vrcmya, in the year 1886, that Mr. Gladstone 
had recently uttered these words : " I like Russia, not 
without reason. I recognize in her a true and logical ally 
of England. The vital resources of the states of Europe 
are rapidly becoming exhausted. Their bone and sinew 
are going to Asia, Africa, and America. But long ex- 
perience proves that there are only two nations who know 
how to colonize — England and Russia. The other nations 
totally lack this quality. Therefore England and Russia 
only have a future. The other powers are on the decline. 
The time is not far off when Germany and France will 
disappear from the horizon of first-class powers. I hold, 
therefore, that it is bad policy for England and Russia 
to quarrel. Let us look at the question from the stand- 
point of mere profit. Where are the principal interests of 
Russia? In the Balkan Peninsula. And ours? In India 
and Africa. Therefore we might easily and advantageously 



2 Slav or Saxon. 

to both, draw our limits. We prefer Russia as an ally, 
also, because she has already land enough to last her for 
centuries. Russia is the most powerful country on land, 
and England is the most powerful country on sea. In 
this difference there is a mutual guaranty of our friend- 
ship." 

Whether Mr. Gladstone said these things or not, the 
thought that England and Russia are to be the two great 
nations of the Old World, is one which must have oc- 
curred to those who have watched the development of 
the great Northern power, and contrasted it with the 
growth of Anglo-Saxon civilization and with that of the 
remainder of continental Europe. The only mistake is 
the belief that the Slav and the Anglo-Saxon can continue 
to colonize and to conquer without collision. These two 
great branches of the Aryan stock, so different in charac- 
ter, customs, political life, and modes of thought, will 
never hold in harmony the divided sovereignty of the 
Eastern Continent. The deep-seated jealousy and ill-will 
which England and Russia show toward each other, have a 
basis more logical than the conclusions of Mr. Gladstone ; 
and sooner or later must come that struggle for dominion 
which shall determine whether the civilization of the Slav 
or that of the Saxon shall be the civilization of the world. 

It is not easy for us in America to realize the gravity of 
the crisis. The nearness of our own forms of civilization 
shuts out from view the growth of the type which is 
more distant, or if we see it, we do not allow enough for 
the perspective. Russia is a long way off. Her ideas are 
so outlandish, so semi-barbarous, so undesirable in every 



The Coming Struggle. 3 

way, according to our thinking, that we do not see how 
they can b^ forced down the throat of humanity. Our 
own forms of social life are so much higher and better, 
that we feel sure that they must ultimately survive. 

But although the law of the survival of the fittest pre- 
vails in social, as well as in organic life, this does not always 
mean the survival of the highest type. In animal life 
many highly developed organisms have disappeared, 
while some of the simplest and crudest types exist to-day. 
So in history we find that many intellectual races have 
fallen a prey to barbarians. No one would have believed 
in the Rome of the Antonines, that the stretch of her uni- 
versal empire would be invaded, her legions overthrown, 
and her civilization all but extinguished by the half-naked 
and undisciplined hordes of Germany and Scythia, that 
same Scythia which is now creeping stealthily into the 
Balkan peninsula, China, and the plains of Central Asia; 
no one would have dreamed that the wealth and refine- 
ment of mediaeval India would become a prey to the wild 
tribes of Tartary, that same Tartary through which Russia 
to-day is working her way for another and more lasting 
conquest. The history of Russia herself furnishes several 
instances of high types of liberalism and culture, trodden 
down and stamped out by the brute force of barbarism. 
The Khazarui, a liberal and enlightened people of the 
South of Russia, who in the Middle Ages maintained inti- 
mate relations with Byzantium and Bagdad and Cordova, 
who built great cities, who estabhshed flourishing schools, 
who tolerated all religions, were crushed out and swept 
away by the barbarous peoples around them. It is, then. 



4 Slav or Saxon. 

no answer to say that because Russian culture is inferior 
to that of the Anglo-Saxon, that the Russian race must 
go under in the struggle. The question is this : does 
Russia possess those conditions of physical force which 
insure its future supremacy ? The characteristics of the 
land, and of the race which inhabits it, furnish great food 
for thought. 

First of all, it is evident enough, as Mr. Gladstone says, 
that among the nations of the Eastern Continent, England 
and Russia only have a future. The diminutive area of 
the remainder of continental Europe is not large enough 
to grow in. No people can acquire a lasting supremacy 
who are pent up within boundaries as narrow as those of 
any country in Western Europe. Indeed, we can see 
everywhere, except in England, America, and Russia, 
signs that the limits of growth are not far off. Leaving 
out of the question all mere barbarous communities, and 
those smaller peoples whose national unity is scarcely 
strong enough to protect them from the aggressions of 
their neighbors ; passing by such forms of nationality as 
the Ottoman and Persian empires, which are visibly tot- 
tering to ruin, or the Chinese, crystallized for centuries 
and now crumbling to pieces, we come to types like those 
furnished by the Latin races. Take Spain, for example. 
Spain grew with marvellous rapidity. It was but a life- 
time from the anarchy which preceded the reign of 
Ferdinand and Isabella to the great empire of Charles V. ; 
but under the influence of a baleful ecclesiasticism, the 
work of decay was as rapid as that of growth. Spain had 
a boundless empire in the New World, and she tried to 



The Coining Struggle. 5 

colonize, but failed. The elements of progress were 
wanting, disintegration began, one colony after another 
dropped away, the defects of the parent stock repeated 
themselves in the offspring, and in the Spanish-American 
colonies, with new land and new political institutions, we 
have the early decrepitude inherited with Spanish blood. 
In Spain itself every thing reminds us of past greatness and 
present weakness. It is a land of memory, not of hope. 

There is reason to believe that France has seen its best 
days. That nation has played a brilliant part in history. 
The warlike instincts of the people, their keenness of in- 
tellect, their nervous energy, the elegance of their man- 
ners, their high rank in all that pertains to material civili- 
zation, the progress of their liberal thought, and their 
present republican institutions, show little signs of decay. 
Yet the French people of to-day are physically inferior to 
their ancestors. The wars of Napoleon made terrible 
ravages with their best types of manhood, while the prev- 
alent licentiousness which is ingrained in their literature 
as well as in their lives, gives us reason to believe that 
the French are not growing. They do not assimilate well 
with other peoples. They cannot colonize. In Canada, in 
Louisiana, in Hindostan, in the West Indies, they failed. 
Will they succeed better in Africa, Tongking, and Mada- 
gascar ? Where are the colonists to people these new 
possessions ? French conquests are not permanent. The 
territory of France to-day is less than that of ancient 
Gaul. The population does not grow. It may well be 
that the downward step taken in the war with Germany 
was but the beginning of the end. 



6 Slav or Saxon. 

The great problem of Italian unity having been solved, 
that kingdom showed new signs of life ; but it is not a 
first-class power, and there is no indication that its vitality 
will extend much beyond the peninsula which it occupies. 
It is limited, like France and Germany, by natural boun- 
daries, both of territory and race. 

There is probably no great nation in the world whose 
life hangs upon a slenderer thread than that of Austria. 
Composed of a number of widely different races, there 
seems to be a lack of the power of welding them together, 
and the very existence of the monarchy is continually 
threatened with the possible disruption of its incongruous 
parts. Possessing, like France and Germany, a territory 
easily invaded, the most that can be expected is that it 
will retain, for a limited time only, its present status. 
During this generation, it has been stripped of its hegem- 
ony in the German Confederation and of its Italian 
possessions, and has obtained but a poor compensa- 
tion in the control of semi-barbarous Bosnia. The Aus- 
trian dynasty is the oldest in Europe, and the nation, if 
nation it can be called, betrays, most plainly of all, the 
weaknesses of old age. 

Germany, of late, has made great strides toward power 
and leadership in Europe. The patience and high in- 
tellectual attainments of the German people, the admir- 
able organization of the German army, and the genius of 
the Great Chancellor, placed it for a time at the head 
of Continental nations. But Germany has not yet shown 
any ability to leap across ethnological barriers. Its ter- 
ritory, situated in the heart of Europe, and densely 



The Coming Struggle. 7 

peopled, does not furnish any great natural facilities for 
repelling aggressions, and the Germans do not colonize. 
The system of " the balance of power," so long recognized 
in Europe, will not permit the conquest of adjoining na- 
tions by Germany ad libitum. It will not allow the growth 
of the German people much faster than by natural multi- 
plication. The density of population is such, that this 
growth will press too closely upon subsistence to be very 
great. Much of the best blood of Germany is passing to 
America to be absorbed by us. There is reason to think 
that German power is not far from its culmination ; there 
is certainly a near limit, beyond which it cannot pass. 
The Germans themselves seem to be conscious of this. 
We can see this feeling in their late efforts to drive the 
wedge of colonization into the Carolines, the Samoan 
Islands, Africa, New Guinea, China, — anywhere to give 
themselves more room. But they can only colonize by 
sea, and there Great Britain holds them at her mercy. 
The limits of German expansion have been fixed by an 
inexorable law. 

The three great peoples that remain are the Americans, 
the English, and the Russians. All three have this com- 
mon advantage : they have unlimited facilities for growth. 
They can extend their dominions either by conquest 
or peaceful colonization into parts of the world where 
it will not be limited by the jealousy and balance-of- 
, power statesmanship of neighboring peoples. They have 
not only the physical ability to grow, but they have also 
an inherent capacity for colonizing. The progress of the 
United States has been rapid, but our activity has been 



8 Slav or Saxon. 

limited to the Western Continent. We are happily freed 
by our unquestionable supremacy in America from those 
international struggles which distract the other hemis- 
phere, and we can move along in the paths of our inter- 
nal development with little fear of foreign interference or 
invasion. But the Eastern Continent possesses twice the 
area and nearly ten times the population of the Western, 
The struggle for the supremacy of the world must be 
fought there, and the great colossi who will contest it 
with each other are England and Russia. The future 
world is to be Slav or Saxon. 

This struggle is coming sooner than it would seem, if 
we compare it with the slow development of nations and 
races in the past. Not that we shall live to see it ; it may 
be generations ahead of us, but the rapidity of social 
changes to-day is as much greater than that of like changes 
in past ages, as the speed of the locomotive is greater 
than that of the coach or caravan. We are scarcely yet 
able to realize the gigantic strides which civilization has 
made within our own times. We do as much now in ten 
years as the ancient world did in a thousand. If we look 
over the map of our boyhood, we can hardly recognize it. 
Take our own country. We used to see an enormous 
tract called the " Great American Desert." Whither has 
it gone? The vast blank on the map of Central Africa, 
that was marked " unexplored " — what has become of 
it ? We see a network of innumerable railways, over 
prairies which were then unknown. A ship canal is 
soon to unite the Atlantic and Pacific, as one already 
joins the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean. The 



The Cojiiins: Struzsrle. 



'i>i>' 



time was when it took a century to civilize a tribe, a 
thousand years to develop a province. Now a single 
generation will witness the transformation of a whole 
continent. 

The great struggle between the Slav and the Saxon is 
not very far away. Its coming is already faintly visible. 
We see nothing now but a cloud the size of a man's hand, 
but the air is pregnant with a storm which will darken 
the whole sky. The difficulties in Afghanistan, Bulgaria, 
and China are only faint premonitory murmurs ; the real 
evidence of the coming struggle is the massing of the 
social forces on either side. There may be a dozen con- 
flicts, followed by a dozen reconciliations ; they would 
mean little except for the vast powers looming up behind. 

Let us review these marshalling forces and see whether 
the picture is overdrawn, or the danger is overestimated. 
Let us look at the future of England and Russia, in the 
light of what we know of their past. Let us examine the 
resources of the empire of the Czars, in respect to territory, 
population, wealth, military appliances, and other material 
and intellectual advantages and deficiencies. Let us look 
at the growth of Russia and see, if we can, whither its 
future tends. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE TERRITORY OF RUSSIA. 

In the matter of land, Russia possesses nearly one sixth 
of the entire world, and her territory is continually grow- 
ing larger by conquest and colonization. Her possessions 
are greater in extent than those of any other nation that 
exists to-day, or any which has ever existed. With the 
gradual filling up of the world, this question of land is 
becoming more and more important. The mere quantity 
of earth seems to be the only thing which remains con- 
stant. If there be only space enough, the same skill which 
redeemed Holland from the sea, which consigned the 
Great American Desert to the realms of imagination, 
which built St. Petersburg upon a marsh, and Archangel 
upon the shores of the Frozen Ocean, seems able every- 
where to transmute that space into a productive agent for 
supplying the wants of man. The most inhospitable rock 
yields ore of priceless value. The swamp and bog contain 
the choicest soil ; the very Arctic teems with exhaustless 
life. Sahara itself needs nothing but the enterprise and 
skill of future generations to be transformed into a gar- 
den. So long as a nation grows, the value of its land 
continues to increase. The time has been when the 



The Territory of Russia. 1 1 

richest soil of Russia had no value. The time may come 
when the plains of Turkestan and the forests of Siberia 
will be valuable as the fields of Central Russia are to- 
day. Formerly great extent of territorial possessions was 
an element of political weakness. The forces of the state 
were scattered over a wide region where communication 
was impossible. When a province was attacked, it took 
too long to hear from it, too long to send assistance. By 
the time thought was interchanged, the conditions were 
all different. 

The Emperor Adrian relinquished vast provinces be- 
cause it weakened Rome to defend them. But now in a 
week we can make the journey of a year ; in the trans- 
mission of thought, space is annihilated altogether. The 
extent of its territory is the strongest security of Russian 
despotism ; it prevents opposing forces from concentrating, 
while the central authority, which controls the avenues of 
communication, can speedily bring its whole force to bear 
upon a single point anywhere in its dominions. 

Not only does the Russian Empire stand pre-eminent 
in mere extent of territory, it is equally remarkable for 
the homogeneity of its possessions. " Its principal char- 
acteristic is unity in immensity." Western Europe is 
broken by mountain ranges and divided by seas, gulfs, and 
bays; there is diversity everywhere. Commerce is largely 
external, agriculture is of every kind, natural barriers 
separate great countries like Spain, England, Scandinavia, 
and Italy from the rest. But the Europe of Russia is one 
vast plain. The same physical unity prevails in Siberia 
and Turkestan. " Russia in Asia is not an exotic colony 



12 Slav or Saxon. 

impossible to assimilate or difficult to keep. It is a 
prolongation and natural dependence of the European 
territories." 

The monotony and level character of the land is not 
with )ut its influence upon the temperament of the people. 
The lack of originality and individuality noticed by 
travellers in Russia is partly due to this cause. From an 
industrial point of view this unity has its disadvantages ; 
the employments of the people are not diversified. Russia 
is too much an agricultural state. But from a political 
point of view nothing could be better adapted to the con- 
centration of power. The people become a unit like the 
land, their occupations are the same, their thoughts, their 
aspirations. They are much more easily subjected to the 
control of a single will. Their separate interests are not 
blowing toward every quarter like the winds from the 
cave of Eolus. 

There is, however, one great variety in nature — the 
change of the seasons. It is only a few weeks from 
the bitter cold of an arctic winter to the heat of a 
summer which is more than tropical. The transfor- 
mation of nature is brilliant and startling. The winters 
are dazzling, the nights of summer are one long twi- 
light. The peasants' songs of spring, which celebrate 
the arrival of the " birds from paradise," the harvest 
melodies, which have for their theme the sudden ripen- 
ing of the grain, and the songs of autumn, lamenting the 
departure of all fruitfulness in nature, are evidences of the 
effect upon the Russian temperament of these transforma- 
tions. The flexibility of Russian character owes much to 



The Territory of Russia. 1 3 

these sudden changes. If they lack originality in intellect, 
there is great originality in their feelings, tastes, and 
habits. The innumerable sects of religious fanatics, the 
strange types of character of which Ivan the Terrible and 
Peter the Great are illustrations, the capacity of the 
Russians for tremendous efforts upon occasions rather 
than for sustained endeavor, are not without relation to 
their long winters of torpor and inactivity, and their short, 
burning summers, when the work of a year must be com- 
pressed into a few brief m.onths. To this, in part, may 
also be due the twofold character remarked by students of 
Russian life, the excesses of liberalism and conservatism, 
of veneration and cynicism, of hope and despondency, of 
intelligence and ignorance ; the boldness in projects of 
reform, the timidity in execution. These contradictions, 
however, are modified by the practical good-sense of the 
Russians, their tendency to realism rather than abstract 
thought, their leaning toward physical science rather than 
intellectual philosophy. In all these things the nation 
shows the impulses and tendencies of childhood, and 
further culture and development may correct its short- 
comings. The desire for reforms of a tangible and physi- 
cal nature remind one much of the same tendency among 
our own people. With greater education and more lib- 
erty the Russians would hardly be behind us in this 
respect. 

The introduction of steam for travel and transportation 
will give greater advantages to Russia than to any other 
country. Its weakness in early days was its want of ac- 
cess to the sea. It was to remedy this that Peter the 



14 Slav or Saxon. 

Great conquered the Baltic provinces and built St. Peters- 
burg. It was in great part for this that he and Catharine 
and Nicholas plotted to overthrow the Ottoman Empire, 
to gain possession of the Bosphorus. But in these latter 
days, when communication by land is easier and swifter 
than by sea, this disadvantage is scarcely felt. From her 
present position Russia could overrun the whole Eastern 
Continent without a navy. For the purposes of interna- 
tional, as well as internal commerce, the railroad will soon 
supersede the ship and the steamer. In a struggle between 
England and Russia the maritime supremacy of England 
would be of little avail. 

Not only has Russia a vast extent of dominion, but a 
considerable portion of her territory is the most fertile 
land in the world. Across European Russia extend, from 
Northeast to Southwest, three great belts — the forests, the 
black land, and the steppes. Over the entire North of 
Russia extend these great forests. Many of the oldest 
cities have been built in the clearings. In the extreme 
North the land is barren, elsewhere it is fairly productive. 
South of the forests comes the great belt of black land. 
There is no richer soil anywhere. It has been farmed for 
centuries without fertilization ; but the most ruinous sys- 
tem of agriculture has failed to weaken its powers. " A 
little rest," as the farmers call it, has been all that has 
been needed. South of the black land extend the 
steppes, the prairies of Russia, where the grass grows 
higher than men's heads. The Northern part of these 
prairies is also fertile ; to the South they are adapted to 
pasturage only. The barren lands were formerly the 



The Territory of Russia. 1 5 

depths of a great inland sea. The area of this district 
is much less than that of the fertile steppes. 

These great belts are prolonged into Siberia. In the 
early history of Russia the South line of the forests was 
the boundary line which divided the agricultural from 
the nomad population, the Russians from the Tartars, the 
Muscovites from the Cossacks. In the forests, the popu- 
lation grows more slowly than farther South, and the peas- 
ants add to their farming a great variety of little industries 
in their agricultural villages, in which they engage during 
the long winter when there can be no labor in the field. 
More fruitful in agricultural promise are the unwooded 
zones of the South, which are increased from year to year 
by the cutting away of the forests. 

The black land and the Northern steppes, like our basin 
of the Mississippi, constitute one of those great storehouses 
of grain which seem to guarantee an unlimited supply for 
the future. The fertile steppes, like our prairies, are a 
vast sea of verdure, which is gradually falling into the 
hands of the husbandmen. It is destined to be conquered, 
by the peasants until " the steppes of Gogol, as in Amer- 
ica the prairies of Cooper, will soon be nothing but a 
remembrance." 

During thousands of years, the great migrations from 
Asia into Europe have passed across these plains, and until 
the present century, the steppes have remained exposed to 
the encroachments of nomads. The settlement of- much 
of the best land in Russia has been thus delayed. It has 
been since the subjugation of the Crimean Tartars and 
the Kirghis of the Caspian that this vast region has become 



1 6 Slav or Saxon. 

secure for the development of systematic agriculture. Twt, 
natural obstacles remain — the absence of trees and the 
great dryness of the climate. But the discovery of oil and 
coal in these regions, and the improved facilities for com- 
merce, are soon to furnish the steppes of Russia with suf- 
ficient fuel and building material, while the planting of 
trees, which is even now commenced in some places, is 
likely to overcome the seasons of barrenness occasioned by 
the excessive drought. 

The present system of agriculture is very wasteful. 
Large tracts are abandoned successively every few years 
by the communities that farm them in most primitive 
fashion. But this is an evil which improved methods of 
culture are already beginning to overcome. 

The mineral resources of Russia are almost wholly un- 
developed, though we know that rich mines of gold, sil- 
ver, lead, copper, and platinum lie hidden in the depths 
of the Ural and Altai mountains. These regions seem 
destined to open up a new civilization in the same way as 
California and Australia. 

At a time when water-power was so essential to manu- 
factures, Russia was behindhand in this great department 
of industry ; but now that steam has usurped the place of 
this old motive-power, her advantages are equal to any. 
In natural facilities for agriculture, commerce, and manu- 
factures, as well as in mineral resources, Russia is not in- 
ferior to the most favored nations. Her natural produc- 
tions render her wholly self-sustaining. If the ports of 
every civilized nation were closed against her, Russia 
would feel the loss less than any country in the world. 



The Territory of Russia. 1 7 

In this, too, we see a great advantage in a military point 
of view. 

There is some drawback in the matter of cHmate ; the 
whole of Russia and Siberia is subject to intense cold in 
winter. The heat of summer is scarcely less intense ; the 
climate has great extremes. The Northern plains of 
Siberia, stretching away into the Arctic Circle, as well 
as a considerable portion of Northern Russia, seem un- 
inhabitable. In the whole North the period of vegeta- 
tion is shorter, and the product of the earth more limited 
on that account. It looks to us now as though a great 
part of Russia must always remain a waste. But it is 
probable that we little know the powers of the civiliza- 
tion of the future for utilizing the most dreary and bar- 
ren regions. The ancient world would never have dreamed 
that a great city could be built on the shores of the White 
Sea. Russia has one compensation for this climate : It 
has produced a race, hardy, patient, and energetic ; the 
only civilized beings who can endure the rigors of its 
dreadful winters. The perseverance of Russian colonists 
and soldiers in overcoming obstacles which would be in- 
surmountable to others, has long been recognized by the 
world. 

Herbert Spencer says that the earliest civilization began 
in warm countries, where men did not have to wrestle 
with the elements for life alone ; where there was some 
surplus energy for the formation of society ; but that as 
civilization went on, and as the means of overcoming 
natural objects became greater, the highest social devel- 
opment moved into colder regions, where natural ob- 



1 8 Slav or Saxon. 

stacks brought out a corresponding energy, which not 
only overcame them, but strengthened the type. It is 
rather Northward than Westward that the course of em- 
pire moves ; beginning in India, Egypt, and Carthage, it 
has crept gradually up to Greece, Rome, Spain, France, 
till the sceptre passed to England, as it is now passing to 
Russia. The reign of the Normans in Sicily, France, 
England, and Russia itself, attests the supremacy of 
Northern vigor. 

The very fruitfulness of nature is sometimes hostile to 
the development of mankind. " Russia," in the words of 
Leroy-Beaulieu, " while it is ill-fitted to nourish the in- 
fancy of civilization, is one of those countries which is ad- 
mirably adapted to receive it and give it further growth." 
" The Russian soil does not use as its mere instrument 
him who cultivates it. It does not threaten his race with 
degeneration. It makes no Creoles. Man meets there 
only two obstructions — cold and space. Cold, more easily 
overcome than extreme heat and less to be feared by our 
civilization ; space, an enemy already mastered by Russia 
and its great ally for the future." 

The great extent of its territory, the sternness of its 
climate, and the absence of large centres of population, 
make a conquest of the country all but impossible. Rus- 
sia can be invaded, many of its towns destroyed, and per- 
haps, even its capital taken ; but the patience of a people 
who are willing to sacrifice their homes at the command 
of their emperor, to submit and to suffer as long as it 
may be necessary, and who alone are able to endure the 
rigors of a Russian winter, is sufficient to secure the 



The Territory of Russia. 19 

ultimate annihilation of any army which attempts the 
sudden conquest of Russia. There is too much of it to 
overrun. Nature combines with man to exterminate the 
invader. 

The only manner in which this vast empire could ever 
be subdued or reduced to an inferior position, is the 
manner in which Russia has herself spread her dominion, 
that is by the conquest in detail of small portions of her 
immense possessions (for instance, the Baltic Provinces, 
Poland, or Finland); the conqueror gradually consolidat- 
ing his power in the conquered provinces. This would re- 
quire not only superior strength, but a persistent purpose, 
extending over many years and probably generations. 
What nation is in a condition to undertake so vast an 
enterprise ? 



CHAPTER III. 

THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE. 

The present population of the Russian empire is about 
one hundred and twenty-five millions. That of the 
British empire, embracing the dense masses of India and 
Africa, is about four hundred millions. But the strength 
of a nation is not to be reckoned by mere numbers. The 
population of the Chinese empire is the greatest in the 
world, yet its solid and lifeless mass cannot resist the most 
trifling aggressions. The Indian empire of Her Majesty 
is composed of material of much the same sort. The 
soldiery has been greatly improved by European training, 
but it is still far behind that of Russia in those patient 
and enduring qualities which ofTer the only assurance of 
success in a long and desperate struggle. 

The population of Russia is distributed very unevenly. 
In the North and South it is extremely sparse; in the 
centre it is comparatively dense. This comprises the 
southern part of the forest zone, the black land, and 
Poland. Here manufactures and other branches of in- 
dustry are most fully developed. The centre of gravity 
of population is near Moscow — a little to the South of the 
ancient capital. In the central districts it is nearly as 



The Russian People. 21 

dense as in continental Europe, and it grows most rapidly 
in these places. 

The Russian race is a compound of many elements, 
welded and fused together, sometimes by the most violent 
means. This process is still going on among the frontier 
races, especially among the Asiatic peoples. These are 
first conquered and then absorbed. The orginal stock, 
the Slav, which has retained the predominance in this 
work of compounding and re-compounding, belongs 
to the great Aryan family. Its kinship to the races of 
West Europe is shown by its language as well as by its 
physical and intellectual traits. The Slavs are most 
closely connected with the Germans in language, but 
they are nearer the Greeks and Latins in character. 
They are mobile, enthusiastic, intelligent, quick to per- 
ceive and act ; they lack the phlegmatic temperament of 
the Teutonic race. They are the latest grown of the 
Aryan children. Even to-day they are not sufficiently 
developed to reveal fully their intellectual aptitudes. 
Their country was exposed to continual Asiatic incur- 
sions, in past times, and their growth and civilization 
were greatly retarded. It is only in our generation that 
they have begun to assume any intellectual prominence ; 
but those who are acquainted with the Russian litera- 
ture of the present time, with the masterpieces of 
Tolstoi, Turgeneff, and Gogol, will hardly fail to foresee 
a brilliant future for a people capable of producing such 
works. Among the branches of the Aryan stock, those 
later in civilization have successively asserted their supe- 
riority over their elder brethren. The Greek yielded to 



22 Slav or Saxon. 

the Roman, the Roman to the Teuton and the Anglo- 
Saxon, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibiHty that 
even these may in turn give way to the Slav. Up to the 
present time the Slav peoples have been thought to lack 
originality. They have been learners at the schools of 
more enlightened nations, but their present literature 
shows that they are by no means wanting in the higher 
qualities of intellect. 

The parent people took up their abode in Western 
Russia, at an early day, while other branches of the 
same stock in Poland, Moravia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Servia, 
Bohemia, and elsewhere, became the ancestors of many of 
the various peoples now subject to Austrian and German 
rule, and of some that dwell in the Balkan Peninsula in 
a chaotic and unstable condition of semi-independence. 
There was also, at an early period, a small infusion of 
Byzantine blood, together with a large infusion of Byzan- 
tine influence, and later, some admixture with Teutonic 
stock, especially in the Baltic provinces ; also an amal- 
gamation with the Lithuanians, an ancient Aryan race, 
who preserved their primitive habits and their pagan- 
ism to a late period. But the great bulk of the tribes 
and races which the Slavs have absorbed were of Mongo- 
lian or Turanian origin. Most important among these 
during the early process of amalgamation, were the innu- 
merable Finnish tribes. Nestor, the oldest historian of 
Russia, gives us such a multitude of names of strange 
peoples which have disappeared from history, that it con- 
fuses us. Gradually these races were absorbed ; a few 
remnants are all that tell us where the rest have gone. 



The Russian People. 23 

Then came the fusion with Turks and Tartars, each 
change strengthening the Slav stock, while many of the 
Mongolian characteristics faded away. The Slavs of 
Great Russia (the Eastern portion surrounding Moscow) 
became gradually predominant and multiplied most rap- 
idly. It was they who acquired (mostly from the Finns, 
but also in part from the Tartars) the largest share of 
Mongolian blood. The Slavs of White Russia in the 
West, and Little Russia farther South, of purer ancestry, 
remained subordinate and increased more slowly. Rus- 
sian and Pole were once of the same race. Differences in 
religion and habits of political thought, during several 
centuries, have made the Poles the most intractable 
among the subjects of the Czar. 

The work of fusion, which has been going on for cen- 
turies, has thus developed the present Great Russian 
nationality, which now comprises a majority of the sub- 
jects of the Czar, and forms the ethnical basis of the 
Russian Empire. This process of race change and amal- 
gamation is still going on at points farther removed from 
the centre of the empire. Even the savages of Eastern 
Siberia are gradually being Russianized. Russian colo- 
nists go everywhere, mingle with the original peoples, 
and soon absorb them. There are to-day some eighty 
different races of men subject to the autocrat ; races 
that speak every possible language ; races that come 
from every parent stock ; races of every religion — Bud- 
dhists, Lamaists, Jews, Protestants, Greeks, Catholics, 
Mohammedans, and pagans of many varieties ; peoples 
that follow every pursuit in life — savages and nomads, 



24 Slav or Saxon. 

as well as pastoral, agricultural, and industrial commun- 
ities. 

But, in the language of Leroy-Beaulieu : 

With all its diverse races, Russia is by no means an inco- 
herent mass, a sort of political conglomerate or marqueterie 
of peoples. It resembles rather France than Turkey or 
Austria in the matter of national unity. If Russia can be 
compared to a mosaic, it is one of those ancient pavements 
where the basis is of a single substance and a single color, 
whose surface only is made of an embroidery of different 
pieces and diverse colors. The greater part of the population 
of foreign origin is thrown out on the extremities of Russia 
and forms around her, especially toward the East and West, a 
sort of girdle of greater or less thickness. All the centre is 
filled by a nationality, at once absorbing and expansive, in the 
midst of which are hidden some small German colonies and 
weak Finnish or Tartar communities, without coherence or 
national bond. In the interior of Russia, in place of unlike- 
nesses, varieties, and contrasts, that which strikes the traveller 
is the uniformity of population and the monotony of life. 

The language has few dialects, the towns are of the 
same form, the peasants the same in habits and mode of 
life, " The nation is made in the image of nature ; it 
shows the same unity, almost the same monotony, as the 
plains which it inhabits." 

The tendency to colonize and incorporate other races 
is aided by a remarkable physical peculiarity of Russia. 
Throughout the whole of its great central plain, stone is 
almost entirely absent ; the buildings are generally of 
wood. Dwellings of this kind do not last. It used to 



The Russian People. 25 

be said that the towns of Russia were burned once every 
seven years. This lack of i)ermanence, together with the 
vast supply of land and the absence of natural barriers, 
made the people half nomadic. Formerly, great bodies 
of peasants would leave their farms and start together in 
search of better lands. This tendency to move on still 
remains a trait of the Russian people. It is the parent 
spirit of that enterprise which is to-day civilizing the 
forests of Siberia and the plains of Turkestan. Russia 
belongs to one of those races which has been driven to 
continual motion by an impulse from within, one of those 
races whose calling is emigration and conquest. Rambaud, 
in his history of Russia, describes the process very forci- 
bly. He says : 

We must recognize that the Russian, almost as much as the 
Anglo-Saxon, has the instinct which drives men to emigrate 
and found colonies. The Russians do, in the far East of 
Europe, what the Anglo-Saxons do in the far West of America. 
They belong to one of the great races of pioneers and back- 
Vv^oodsmen. All the history of the Russian people, from the 
foundation of Moscow, is that of their advance into the forest, 
into the black land, into the prairie. The Russian has his 
trappers and setders in the Cossacks of the Dnieper, the Don, 
and the Terek ; in the tireless fur-hunters of Siberia ; in the 
gold-diggers of the Ural and the Altai ; in the adventurous 
monks who lead the way, founding in regions ever more 
distant, a monastery which is to be the centre of a town ; 
lastly, in the Raskolniki, or Dissenters, Russian Puritans or 
Mormons, who are persecuted by laws human and divine, and 
seek from forest to forest the Jerusalem of their dreams. 



26 Slav or Saxon. 

The level plains of Russia naturally tempted men to migra- 
tion. The mountain keeps her own, the mountain calls her 
wanderers to return ; while the steppe, stretching away to the 
dimmest horizon, invites you to advance, to ride at a venture, 
to " go where the eyes glance." The flat and monotonous 
soil has no hold on its inhabitants ; they will find as bare a 
landscape anywhere. As for their hovel, how can they care 
for that, it is burned down so often ? The Western expression, 
"the ancestral roof," has no meaning for the Russian peasant. 
The native of Great Russia, accustomed to live on little, and 
endure the extremes of heat and cold, was born to brave the 
dangers and privations of the emigrant's life. With his crucifix, 
his ax in his belt, and his boots slung behind his back, he will 
go to the end of the Eastern world. However weak may be 
the infusion of the Russian element in an Asiatic population, 
it cannot transmute itself or disappear ; it must become the 
dominant power. History has helped to make this movement 
irresistible. When the Russian took refuge in Suzdal, he was 
compelled to clear and cultivate the very worst land of his 
future domain, for the black land was then overrun by nomads. 
How could he escape the temptation to go back and look in 
the South for more fertile soil, which, with less labor, would 
yield four times as great a harvest ? Villages and whole can- 
tons in Muscovy have been known to empty themselves in a 
moment, the peasants marching in a body, as in the old times 
of the invasions, toward the " black soil," the " warm soil," of 
the South. Government and the landholders were compelled 
to use the most horrible means to stop these migrations of the 
husbandmen. 

Without these repressive measures, the steppes would have 
been colonized two centuries earlier than they were. The 
report that the Czar authorized emigration, a forged ukase, a 



The Russian People, 27 

rutQor, any thing was enough to uproot whole peoples from 
the soil. The peasant's passion for wandering explains the 
development of Cossack life in the plains of thie South ^ it-ex- 
plains the legislation which, from the beginning of the sixteenth 
century, chained the serf to the glebe and bound him to the 
soil. In the thirteenth century, on the other hand, the peasant 
was free. His prince encouraged him to emigrate, and hence 
came the colonization of Eastern Russia. The Russian race 
has the faculty of absorbing certain aboriginal stocks. The 
Little Russians assimilated the remnants of the Turkish 
tribes ; the Great Russians swallowed up the Finnish nations 
of the East. 

The qualities of the Russian peasant fit him admirably 
for this great work of the absorption of other races, espe- 
cially races whose civilization is of a lower type than his 
own. " He is good-natured, long-suffering, conciliatory, 
capable of bearing extreme hardships, and endowed with 
a marvellous power of adapting himself to circumstances." 
Arrogance and the assumption of personal or national 
superiority are wholly foreign to him. He occupies 
a few acres, tills his land in peace, mingles with the 
natives in the friendliest way, and the two races soon 
blend together and become one community, and finally 
one people. 

Vambery says : 

There has been no standstill in the Russian State from its 
infancy to this day. We have seen that while processes of 
crystallization were going on in one part of the gigantic Em- 
pire, there were already springing up new formations in other 



28 Slav or Saxon. 

parts of it, caused by the accession of new and fresh elements. 
The influence of ancient Rome in revolutionizing the ethnical 
relations of Europe can alone be compared in a certain degree 
with the Russianizing influence of the Russian State on Europe, 
with this difference, however, that the results attending the 
process of transformation under Russian agencies, whilst they 
are not more rapid in developing than in the case of Rome, 
are far more intense in their effect. We have no authentic 
statistics at our disposal concerning the progress of popula- 
tion in Russia during the last century, but if we consider 
that there were, at the most, thirty millions of Russians at 
the beginning of this century, and that their number has 
risen within recent times up to eighty millions, it will not be 
difficult to guess where the Voguls, Ostyaks, Tchermisses, and 
other nations about whose large numbers travellers of the last 
century have given us information, have got to. We neither 
wish to, nor can we, here speak of all the particulars of the 
process of amalgamation ; the process remains forever the 
old one. 

First appear on the stage the merchant and the Cossack ; 
they are followed by the Popa, with his superstition and wor- 
ship of images, and the rear is brought up by the Vodki and 
the Tchinovniks with their train of Russian peculiarities, 
and they all manage very soon, with due regard to local 
circumstances, to insinuate themselves into the good graces 
of the natives, an achievement which seldom meets with any 
resistance, owing to the prevailing Asiatic characteristics of 
Russian society. In due course of time, the natives, continu- 
ally imposed upon in their dealings with the crafty Russian 
merchant, fall victims of pauperism ; the holy-water sprinkle 
and the brandy flask inaugurate the process of denationaliza- 
tion, a process which is hastened by the cleverly inserted 



The Russian People. 29 

W'edges of Cossack colonies, and half a century of Russian 
reign has proved sufficient to turn Ural- Altaians of the purest 
Asiatic stock into Aryan Russians. The physical character- 
istics alone survive for a while, like ruins of the former 
ethnical structure ; but even these last mementos become ob- 
literated by the crossing of races which results from inter- 
marriage, and we meet to-day genuine Russians in countries 
where in the last century no traces of them could have been 
found. 

Wallace thus describes the changes still going on : 

During my wanderings in the Northern provinces, I have 
found villages in every stage of Russification. In one, every 
thing seemed thoroughly Finnish : the inhabitants had a 
reddish-olive skin, very high cheek-bones, obliquely set eyes, 
and a peculiar costume ; none of the women and very few of 
the men could understand Russian, and any Russian who 
visited the place was regarded as a foreigner. In a second, 
there were already some Russian inhabitants ; the others had 
lost something of their pure Finnish type, many of the men 
had discarded the old costume and spoke Russian fluently, 
and a Russian visitor was no longer shunned. In a third, the 
Finnish type was still further weakened ; all the men spoke 
Russian and nearly all the women understood it ; the old male 
costume had entirely disappeared, and the old female costume 
was rapidly following it ; and intermarriage with the Russian 
population was no longer rare. In a fourth, intermarriage had 
almost completely done its work, and the old Finnish element 
could be detected merely in certain peculiarities of physiog- 
nomy and accent. 

And Wallace, as well as Leroy-Beaulieu, remarks the 



30 Slav or Saxon. 

greater persistence of former race characteristics among 
the women than among the men. 

From the continuation of this work of consolidation up 
to the present time, as well as from Russian history, it is 
evident that the Russian people is in a state of formation 
both moral and material. Its power is less to-day than its 
size or population. Its weakness in the Crimean and Bul- 
garian wars is an evidence of this. But this is the weak- 
ness of infancy and not of old age, and will disappear with 
the firmer fibre of a larger growth. 

Most of the capitals of the governments in the South 
and East are younger than the capitals of the Atlantic 
States of North America. The great metropolis of Odessa 
is less than a century old. These new districts of Russia 
have increased tenfold in less than one hundred years. 
This is caused by colonization and the process of fusion 
with the native races which accompanies it. This process 
of fusion becomes more and more rapid as facilities for 
communication increase. 

Sociology has shown that compound races, where the 
elements composing them are not too incongruous for 
admixture, are the best races. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxons 
have furnished proof of this as well as the French and the 
Italians. The union in these cases was accomplished 
centuries ago. The union of the Gauls and Franks, as 
well as that of the Lombards and the Latins took place 
before the Norman-Saxon fusion, and the vigor of these 
peoples has not lasted like that of the Anglo-Saxon. 
But this same process is going on in Russia to-day just as 
it is in America, where large immigration and the admix- 



The Russian People. 3 1 

ture of Celtic and German blood is improving the American 
stock. Russians seeem to have the faculty of absorb- 
ing greater varieties of the human species than Anglo- 
Saxons. No difference of race, language, or color seems 
to stand in their way. The very names of the aborigines 
become changed as soon as the heel of Russian conquest 
has trodden over their land. Lieutenant Alikhanoff, the 
adventurer who planned the capture of Merv, was the 
Asiatic Mussulman, Ali Khan. When he became a Rus- 
sian, the addition of a sufifix gave him a new name. The 
identity of the conquered race is lost in this great process 
of amalgamation. There is not an office in the Russian 
State, to which the most savage of its subjects is not 
as eligible as the native of St. Petersburg. General 
Melikoff, whose power was second to that of the Czar 
alone, was not a Russian, but a Georgian. In most places 
no difference is recognized in law, custom, or education. 
The Russian is the only language taught in the schools, 
official business is transacted in no other tongue. The 
natives who acquire it rise rapidly in the service. In Po- 
land this transmutation has been brought about under 
circumstances of great cruelty. The Poles loved dearly 
their language, their church, their ancient institutions. 
Their civilization was at least equal to that of Russia. 
The forcible up-rooting of all that was dear to them has 
been a source of great sorrow and suffering. 

Similar changes are accomplished by force elsewhere. 
Colonies of Russians are sent into new districts by Im- 
perial command. Great numbers of men are exiled for 
various offences from different portions of Russia, and 



32 Slav or Saxon. 

compelled to live in other parts of the empire, thus keep- 
ing the whole of Russian society in a state of motion, 
and preventing in great degree the fossilization which 
so commonly follows upon the footsteps of autocratic 
rule. The Russian people are patient and submit to 
these changes without a murmur. When criminals are 
exiled to Siberia, their families accompany them, and these 
convict settlements form nuclei for the growth of infant 
colonies. This process of colonization by force aids ma- 
terially the vast currents of voluntary colonization pro- 
duced by the adventurous spirit of the Russians themselves. 
Even the Church, a conservative force elsewhere, encour- 
ages this growth, and the great monasteries of the Black 
Clergy have often been the outposts of Russian civilization. 
Add to this the fact that all emigration from Russia is 
prohibited, that Russia does not recognize the right of 
any of her subjects to change his allegiance or nationality, 
that the Russian can never leave his province, his country, 
nor his town, without the permission of his government, 
which is refused if he intends permanent expatriation, and 
we have a system which insures for a long time the con- 
stant growth of the Russian people. Statistics are acces- 
sible for only a short time back, but from them we learn 
that the population of Russia doubles in somev/hat less 
than sixty years. This is slower than the growth of 
the United States, which is aided by a large influx of 
foreign immigrants. There is comparatively little immi- 
gration into Russia ; the growth is internal. When in- 
dustrial conditions change, emigration to America may 
cease. But in Russia we have the assurance of a constant 



The Russian People. 33 

increase in population. One peculiar feature in Russian 
social life tends to secure the rapid growth of the people 
by natural multiplication. The individual ownership of 
property" in all other civilized states brings with it some 
restriction to the growth of population. The larger the 
family the less must be the share of each child in the 
patrimony. But in Russia, where the inhabitants of each 
village own its land in common, the share of each family 
is in proportion to the number of male members; or in 
proportion to the number of the heads of households. 
The greater the number of male children the larger will 
be the share of the family in the communal land, either 
when the child is born or when he becomes the head of a 
new household. The growth of population is thus en- 
couraged, and it is natural that it should be much more 
rapid in Russia than in the countries of the West. The 
great drawback up to the present time has been on ac- 
count of unfavorable conditions of climate and hygiene. 
Russian families are very large, but the mortality is very 
great. The great mass of the people have hitherto 
known nothing of medicine, surgery, or the laws of 
health. The natural increase in population has been 
much checked on this account. The wretched food, 
the long fasts prescribed by the church, drunkenness, 
insufficient ventilation in winter, the filthy habits of 
the peasantry, the contagious diseases common in the 
villages, — all these things make the death-rate very high. 
Most of these difficulties, however, can be avoided by 
greater knowledge and care, and there has been a de- 
cided improvement of late years. With proper precau- 



34 Slav or Saxon. 

tions, the severity of the climate is no great drawback, as 
the high average duration of human life in Scandinavia 
abundantly proves. If the present communal system 
lasts, the birth-rate will continue to be great, while a bet- 
ter knowledge of the laws of health will materially lessen 
the mortality. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE MILITARY AUTOCRACY. 

It is not only the vast area and constantly increasing 
population of Russia which qualifies her for that career 
of universal dominion to which she aspires, but also the 
character of her political institutions, now unique among 
the great powers of the world. It is the complete and 
absolute unity which her autocracy gives, it is the strength 
of her military institutions which threatens civilization. 
A peculiar fitness for this form of government seems 
now to be ingrained in the Russian people, not indeed 
by nature, for the Slav races were originally free, but 
by the force of long-continued custom. Among the 
great mass of the Russian people (kept ignorant indeed 
by this same despotism), an autocratic government is the 
highest ideal, and the Holy Father, the Czar, is looked 
upon with the deepest reverence. When, upon the acces- 
sion of Anna Ivanovna, after the time of Peter the Great, 
it was proposed to limit her authority, many of her 
subjects expressed the strongest dissatisfaction, and 
demanded that she should remain absolute ruler, which 
she did. Autocracy has a useful servant in the Rus- 
sian Church. The Roman hierarchy has been some- 

35 



36 Slav or Saxon. 

times a source of strength, but at others a source of 
weakness to monarchy. The concentration of the religious 
thought of a people upon a foreign object, has often di, 
minished their loyalty to their own sovereign. The Russian 
Church is a purely national institution, and is wholly sub- 
servient to the temporal power of the Czar. It was one 
of the most formidable instruments in the making of the 
despotism. Every dignitary in it, from the patriarch to 
the curate, held his place in absolute dependence upon the 
will of the Prince. The notions of autocracy came into 
Russia from Byzantium, with the Church. Absolute and 
unquestioned obedience to the will of the Czar is part of 
the religion of every Russian, indeed the chief part. It 
is impressed upon him as his highest duty by a clergy 
who are the facile instruments of the Czar for that pur- 
pose. Rebellion is something beyond ordinary heresy 
and sacrilege. The thoughts of the people are bound in 
spiritual chains, quite as effectually as their bodies are 
subject to physical power. There is as little liberty of 
thought as of action ; the dread of spiritual punishment is, 
perhaps, more effective than the fear of Siberia or the 
fortresses. 

In Russia only has autocracy been able to withstand 
the influences of modern civilization. Nicholas was 
perhaps more an autocrat than any of his predecessors. 
He regarded not only the earth, but the very skies of 
Russia as his possessions. Not even in thought would he 
permit his authority to be questioned. Whatever it may 
do in the future, the revolutionary spirit in Russia has 
as yet touched only the upper layers of society ; it is 



The Military A utocracy. 37 

found mostly among the small class of the well educated. 
It destroyed a czar, it may overthrow a dynasty, but it 
must have a much greater growth than it has yet attained 
to up-root from Russia the despotic principle which has 
been so long ingrained in the fibre of its political organ- 
ism. The Anglo-Saxon form of government is still a 
long way off from the Russian people. Whatever consti- 
tution may in the future be given to Russia, it is certain 
that it will at first tend more than the organic law of 
other states to the centralization of political power. In- 
dividual life will still be largely regulated by government 
agencies. It would take some time (even if the govern- 
ment were so disposed) to lift a hundred million people 
out of the ignorance and habits of unquestioned obedi- 
ence to which the despotism has accustomed them. 

The absence of great centres of population has also fa- 
vored the growth and maintenance of the despotic princi- 
ple ; there is no point where the forces of resistance can 
combine. Only seventeen of all the Russian cities have a 
population of over fifty thousand. Not more than one 
tenth of the people dwell in cities. Russia is a strange 
example of the survival, in our own age, of a type of 
civilized society almost wholly militant ; a nation ruled 
as if it were an army. Except in the tiny village commu- 
nities, local self-government is confined to the most 
trifling matters ; a few bureaus at the capital direct 
every thing. The growth of the Russian people is by 
militant methods, totally different from the industrial 
methods of English development. The political integra- 
tion of Russia contrasts in a manner most menacing with 



38 Slav or Saxon. 

the process of disintegration which is going on every- 
where in the British Empire. In spite of the immense 
industrial growth of England and her colonies, the politi- 
cal bonds between them are becoming weaker. The 
distant colonies, such as Canada, Australia, and South 
Africa, inhabited by Anglo-Saxon peoples, are almost 
wholly independent. A certain moral support is about all 
that the mother country can count upon. They are 
little better than friendly nations, the ties have been vol- 
untarily relaxed in favor of local self-government and in 
the interest of individual liberty. The agitation for 
home rule in Ireland leads us to think that a similar 
policy will be pursued at no distant time with respect 
to that island. A great blessing is conferred upon 
humanity by this policy if the Anglo-Saxon race is to 
remain predominant. 

A work written by H. Y. S. Gotten, of the Bengal Civil 
Service, " New India, or India in Transition," demon- 
strates that the present mode of governing that empire 
cannot last ; that the British administration does not 
respond to the currents of native thought and feeling, 
that even the English ideas, absorbed by the peoples of 
Hindostan, have made them less satisfied with a foreign 
yoke, which is itself inconsistent with those ideas ; that 
the English and the natives do not understand each 
other, and there is a strong desire on the part of the 
latter to govern themselves in their own way. The Eng- 
lish claim to have been educating them for the duties and 
responsibilities of self-government, and the tendency will 
be toward the granting of this at no very distant day. 



The Military Autocracy. 39 

Mr. Gotten insists that the future of India will be a fede- 
ration of independent powers, cemented together by the 
power of England. 

But this policy, both in India and elsewhere, so salutary 
in other respects, may render England all the more unable, 
in a military point of view, to cope with her great antag- 
onist, whose social forces are moving in an opposite di- 
rection. In the great struggle to come, England will be 
aided by the self-interest and the affection of a large 
number of dependent industrial peoples, averse to war, 
from whom she can compel little against their will. She 
will be confronted by an antagonist whose nation is an 
army, whose citizens are accustomed by habit and inherit- 
ance of thought to obey the slightest wish of the central 
authority which can direct the energies of every man in 
the Russian dominions toward the accomplishment of a 
single object. 

The Russian army is to-day the largest in the world. 
In time of war it can be augmented to more than three 
millions of men. At the present moment the Russian 
soldiers may not be equal to their English rivals ; but 
they possess great staying qualities. Ever since the time 
of Peter the Great they have learned how to conquer 
through defeat. 

The Russian soldier is thus described by M. Cucheval 
Clarigny : 

Docile, as well as brave, easily contented, supporting with- 
out complaint all fatigues and privations, and ready for every 
thing ; the Russian soldier constructs roads, clears canals, and 
re-establishes the ancient aqueducts. He makes the bricks 



40 Slav or Saxon. 

with which he builds the forts and the barracks which he in- 
habits ; he fabricates his own cartridges and projectiles ; he is 
a mason, a metal-founder, or a carpenter, according to the 
need of the hour, and the day after he is dismissed he con- 
tentedly follows the plow. 

With such instruments at its disposal the Russian power will 
never give way. A few years will suffice to render final the 
conquest of any land on which it has set its foot. 

Another great advantage of autocracy over English lib- 
eralism in war is this: A policy dependent upon the will 
of one man only is pretty sure to be persisted in. It 
must be a very weak czar who will waver from month to 
month, or from year to year in his purposes, while the 
English government, depending for its existence upon the 
majority of the House of Commons, is subject not only 
to a change in the policy of the ministry, but to sudden 
changes in the ministry itself. The British constitution 
is defective in giving effect too quickly to sudden revolu- 
tions in popular thought. While a government ought to 
embody the thought of the people, it should be its per- 
manent conviction, and not its mere temporary impulse. 
A ministry coming in on some fresh tide of popular 
passion may completely overthrow the plans of its prede- 
cessors. In war, such a system is almost as bad as the old 
Roman plan of dividing the leadership of an army be- 
tween two generals, and providing that each should be in 
command a single day. In constancy of purpose do we 
find the key to success. 

It looks now as if the conflict between England and 
Russia cannot much longer be postponed. Should it last 



The Military Autocracy. 41 

long, and involve great sacrifices, the English people 
might think it better to give up their Asiatic possessions 
than to continue to defend them at too great a cost. 
The immense losses sustained by England in the Boer 
war have made the people most reluctant to undertake 
an armed conflict with a powerful enemy. The sceptre 
is passing from the land-owning and cultivated classes to 
those who have a hard struggle to earn their daily bread, 
who have no time to care for prestige and political power, 
who will not sacrifice their own interests for objects as 
distant as China or India. Let India fall, and Russia is 
assured the domination of the continent. 



CHAPTER V. 

RUSSIAN CONQUESTS AND AGGRESSIONS. 

When we consider the probable growth of the Russian 
Empire in the future by the light of what it has al- 
ready done, we find enough to appall the imagination. 
When the Russian people first appear in history, they 
occupy a territory considerably less than one fifth of their 
present European possessions alone. The former capital 
of Russia, Moscow, was built upon lands conquered from 
Asiatic races ; the present capital, St. Petersburg, upon 
lands wrested from the Swedes as late as the time of Peter 
the Great. The little plateau of Valdai, in the Northwest 
of Russia, is the source of three great river systems, the 
Ilmen, connecting it with the great lakes and rivers in the 
North country, the Dnieper, flowing South into the Black 
Sea, and the Volga flowing Southeast into the Caspian. 
This was the cradle of the Russian people. The early 
capitals. Kief and Novgorod, were upon the Dnieper and 
the Ilmen respectively. Along these channels spread the 
ancient civilization of Russia ; from Novgorod to the 
Northeast, finally reaching the shores of the White Sea 
and the Arctic Ocean ; from Kief to the Southwest, men- 
acing even the power of Byzantium ; and later, after the 

42 



Russian Conquests and Aggressions. 43 

temporary overthrow of Kief, Russia went East to Mos- 
cow, and on to the Urals, and Southeast along the Volga 
to the Caspian, and across the Urals to Siberia. Then 
began the struggle with Sweden for the provinces upon 
the Baltic. Then the Cossacks of South Russia were 
united with the Muscovite empire, and vast tracts of 
land were wrested from the Turks. Then came the 
struggle with Poland, resulting in the three partitions of 
that unhappy kingdom. Then followed the seizure of 
Finland from the Swedish monarchy. Then the Caucasus 
fell, and new acquisitions were made from Persia and 
Turkey. Then the country of the Amoor was wrested 
from China and Saghalien won by shrewd diplomacy from 
Japan ; then the network of Russian conquest enveloped 
the plains of Turkestan and spread to Afghanistan, while 
Mongolia and Thibet have been carefully explored with 
a view to future annexation. Colonel Prejewalsky says 
that during his expedition to Thibet in 1 884-1 885 — 

A portrait of the Czar acted like a charm. When it was 
shown to the people they went into raptures. The conviction 
grows in Thibet that the " Divine figure of the North will 
soon extend his protection to the expectant Mongols who are 
sick of Mandarin tyranny." 

Prejewalsky further says: 

The much-lauded two centuries of friendship between Rus- 
sia and China, notwithstanding all our efforts to prolong it, 
even at the price of concession and indulgence, hang in reality 
by a thread which any day may snap asunder. The favorable 



44 Slav or Saxon. 

solution of the many vexed questions which confront us is 
hardly to be attained by peaceful means. It may be that the 
moment for war is not far distant. Whether we like it or not, 
we have a long account which must be settled, and practical 
proof given to our haughty neighbors, that Russian spirit and 
Russian courage are equally potent factors, whether in the 
heart of Great Russia or in the Asiatic Far East. 

No geographical nor ethnographical limits have been 
broad enough to confine Russian ambition. Her boundaries 
are changing from year to year; no man can foresee the 
end. Let the conquered peoples speak what language 
they M^ill, let their skin be of whatever color, let their re- 
ligion be what it may. Catholic as in Poland, Protestant 
as in Finland, Pagan as in Siberia, Moslem as in Turke- 
stan, it is all one ; they soon become parts of the great 
Russian race. Who can draw the limits of this power of 
expansion ? We have evidence enough that Russian am- 
bition has many times plotted conquests which have not 
yet been made, Catharine the Second, who divided Po- 
land with Austria and Prussia, planned a division of the 
Turkish Empire also. Paul the First held correspondence 
with Napoleon, and ordered an army of invasion to set 
out for India. The Moscow Gazette in 1832 declared that 
the next treaty with England must be made at Calcutta. 
Nicholas began the war which terminated in the Crimea, for 
the possession of the Ottoman Empire and his proposition 
to the English ambassador for a division of the sick man's 
assets, can hardly have faded from the memory of m.any who 
are still living. The last Turkish war was fomented by Rus- 
sian emissaries in the Balkan peninsula for a like purpose. 



Russian Conquests and Aggressions. 45 

There is no better illustration of the greed of Russia, 
and of the unprincipled manner in which she seeks to 
absorb her smaller and weaker neighbors, than the events 
which took place in Bulgaria in the year 1886. The 
sovereign of that country was deeply beloved by his sub- 
jects, but because, in obedience to their wishes, he was 
unwilling to carry out the policy of Russia at the time of 
the revolution in Eastern Romelia, Russia determined 
that he should no longer rule. First, he was dismissed 
in disgrace from the colonelcy of a Russian regiment to 
which he had been appointed. We next read that the 
Russian newspapers are urging the Czar to intervene in 
Bulgaria unless Prince Alexander is deposed by his own 
subjects. Bulgaria is infested with Russian agents. Bul- 
garian regiments are corrupted by Russian gold, and on 
the 20th of August a regiment of cavalry is detained in 
Sofia after nightfall when other troops had retired to 
their barracks, and about three o'clock in the morning 
they surround the palace of the prince. Alexander is in 
bed. The revolutionary leaders force their way to his 
ante-chamber and seize him. He is made a prisoner on 
his own yacht and conducted to Russia. The report is 
spread that he has abdicated. The Russian press now 
announces that it does not believe the other powers will 
interfere with Russia's " direct pacification of Bulgaria." 
ZankofT, the leader of the insurrection, is made minister, 
and proclaims that the Czar will protect Bulgaria. But 
the crime of the capture of Alexander is so infamous that 
the Russian government does not dare to avow openly its 
participation in the measure. Alexander lands at Reni, 



46 Slav or Saxon. 

but Russia does not venture to detain him within her 
borders. He finds that his people have arisen almost to 
a man in his behalf. A great concourse meet him at 
every point. Soldiers who joined the insurrection con- 
fess that they received twenty rubles each, and were told 
that Alexander had plotted to sell Bulgaria to the Turks. 
DeGiers says that Russia will not occupy Bulgaria while 
it remains tranquil, but that Russia's position will be 
critical should Alexander insist upon executing the con- 
spirators. Now, if Russia did not incite the revolt, of 
what interest is it to her whether or not political crime is 
punished in a neighboring country ? Zankoff is arrested, 
but Alexander is compelled to order his release. On 
August 30th, Alexander sends a most submissive tele- 
gram to the Czar. The Czar replies: " I cannot approve 
of your return to Bulgaria, foreseeing from it sinister 
consequences to the kingdom so sorely tried. 
Your Highness must decide your own course ; I reserve 
to myself to judge what my father's venerated memory, 
the interests of Russia, and the peace of the East, require 
of me." 

Alexander now finds himself abandoned by the other 
powers. Germany, Austria, and Russia forbade him to 
execute the plotters against him, thus depriving him of 
the very essence of power. So he resigns. He says: " I 
cannot remain in Bulgaria, for the Czar will not permit 
me. I am forced to quit the throne. The independence 
of Bulgaria requires that I leave the country ; if I did not, 
Russia would occupy it." Regents are appointed. The 
Czar agrees to recognize the regency on condition that no 



Russian Conquests and Aggressions 47 

acts of violence be committed, and acts of violence are con- 
tinually incited by Russian agents. The Bulgarian So- 
branje resolve to court-martial the officers inculpated in 
kidnapping Alexander. 

But soon the conspirators, instead of being punished, 
are demanding, by means of Russian influence, a direct 
representation in the government. Kaulbars is sent as 
Russian agent, and thanks Zankoff and his friends for 
their kindly welcome, asking them (not the regency) to 
announce throughout the country that the Czar will give 
protection to Bulgaria on condition that full confidence be 
placed in him. Kaulbars declares that political prisoners 
must be released and the state of siege raised, and unless 
Russia's demands are obeyed he will leave Bulgaria, and 
the occupation of the country will follow. He demands 
the indefinite postponement of the election for members 
of the National Assembly; but this is not done. He 
accuses the Bulgarians of insubordination, and declares 
that Russia cannot allow Bulgaria to try the kidnappers 
of Alexander, nor can Alexander return. In the elections 
four hundred and eighty representatives of the party of 
the regency are chosen as against forty-one of all other 
parties. The majorities are immense. But now Russia 
declares the elections illegal and demands a postponement 
of the Sobranje. The government refuses to yield. It 
is reported that Kaulbars tries to win over several of the 
Bulgarian garrisons to work a revolution in favor of 
Russia. 

The Sobranje decide to send to the Czar a deputation 
to complain of the action of Kaulbars, but the Russian 



48 Slav or Saxon. 

consuls are ordered to refuse passports, and Kaulbars 
informs the government that Russia will regard the pro- 
ceedings of the Sobranje as void. The Russian consul at 
Varna threatens to bombard the town unless the prefect 
permits free access of the Russo-Bulgarian partisans to 
the consulate, and Kaulbars informs the Bulgarian foreign 
minister that the Russian gun-boats there will vigorously 
affirm their importance if events render it necessary. 

In compliance with the demands of Kaulbars, the plot- 
ters against Alexander are released. And now the Russian, 
Nabakoff, leads a band of Montenegrins at midnight 
and attacks the prefecture at Burgas, seizes the prefect, 
and proclaims Russian rule : but his revolt also, is soon 
quelled. These plotters too are tried, but Kaulbars de- 
clares the trial void. England and Austria are at last 
awakened and act with firmness to prevent further out- 
rages. Lord Salisbury denounces " the midnight conspira- 
cy, led by men debauched by foreign gold, which hunted 
Prince Alexander from the throne of Bulgaria and out- 
raged the conscience and sentiment of Europe." Prudence 
will not permit an immediate resort to arms, so Russia 
will bide her time. 

The present aggressions of the Czar are thus epitomized 
by Charles Marvin : 

Russia has a frontier line across Asia five thousand miles 
in length, no single spot of which can be regarded as perma- 
nent. Starting from the Pacific, we find that she hankers for 
the northern part of Corea, regards as undetermined the 
boundary with Manchuria and Mongolia, regrets that she gave 



Russian Conquests and Aggressions. 49 

back Kuldja, hopes that she will some day have Kashgar, 
questions the Ameer's right to rule Afghan Turkestan, demands 
the gates of Herat, keeps open a great and growing complica- 
tion with Persia about the Khorassan frontier, treats more and 
more every year the Shah as a dependent sovereign, discusses 
having some day a port in the Persian Gulf, and believes she 
will be the future mistress of the whole of Asia Minor. 

Let us briefly review the course of the Russians in 
Turkestan during the past twenty years. Central Asia, 
while it contains large and valuable oases, adapted to 
stock-raising and many other forms of agriculture, has no 
such stores of wealth as would justify its conquest for its 
own sake. Possibly the Russians did not know this when 
they first undertook its subjection, but they have long 
since understood it, and the continued march of Russian 
conquest must have in view some object beyond the mere 
possession of these Central Asian districts. The expense 
of administering the government in these regions is con- 
siderably greater than the revenues derived from them, 
yet the Russians press their conquests farther and farther. 
Why do they do this ? Their object is adequately ex- 
plained by the words and acts of some of their own great 
military authorities. 

The designs of the Emperor Paul, who projected a 
march upon India (which was to be stimulated by raising 
hopes of plunder in the minds of the wild nomads of 
Central Asia, who were to be invited to join him), were 
renewed in 1864, when the Russians first broke through 
the sand belt which then formed the Southern boundary 
of the empire, and took the rich and populous city of 



50 Slav or Saxon. 

Tashkend. This city contained more than one hundred 
thousand inhabitants. It has been largely remodelled 
by the Russians, is well built, and possesses a theatre, 
a public library, etc., and is entirely hedged in by beauti- 
ful gardens and orchards that surround it. When this 
city was acquired by the Russians, Tchernayeff, the 
leader of the expedition, writes : " The mysterious veil 
which has hitherto covered the conquest of India, a con- 
quest looked upon until now as fabulous, is beginning to 
lift itself before my eyes." In 1868, the overthrow of 
Bokhara followed, but its independent government was 
not entirely destroyed. The Emir was permitted to re- 
main upon the throne, but he became a vassal and the 
blind instrument of Russian rule. The administration of 
the province was less expensive in this form than in any 
other. The conquest of Khiva followed in 1873, and here 
too a kind of autonomy was preserved, but saddled with 
an immense war indemnity, and totally dependent upon 
Russia. In 1876, Khokand was overthrown and bodily 
incorporated. 

But it was found by this time that these Eastern 
khanates were not upon the most direct road to India. 
The elevated and impassable barriers of the Hindoo- 
Koosh stood in the way, and a passage must be found 
more to the West and better suited to military operations 
having their base in the Caucasus and on the shores of 
the Caspian. Meantime a great number of steamers had 
been constructed, and were used in the petroleum traffic 
on that inland sea. A suitable harbor, Krasnovodsk, was 
found on the Eastern shores of the Caspian, and Skobeleff, 



Russian Conquests and Aggressions. 5 1 

the most brilliant of Russian generals, whose name became 
famous in the last Turkish war, projected an expedition 
against the native tribes. A stretch of desert was over- 
come by means of a railway laid in the sand, over which 
the army was transported from the Caspian to the assault 
of Gok Tepe, a city which was heroically defended by 
the natives, the women fighting with the men. Its cap- 
ture was followed by the slaughter of thirty thousand in- 
habitants. It was this same Skobeleff who said : " It will 
be in the end our duty to organize masses of Asiatic cav- 
alry and to hurl them into India under the banner of 
blood and pillage as a vanguard, as it were, thus reviving 
the times of a Tamerlane." 

Then Alikhanoff, an officer who had been degraded to 
the ranks for misconduct, was sent as an emissary to 
Merv, the ancient Maru, " Queen of the World." He in- 
gratiated himself with the Tekkes. Soon Merv submit- 
ted to Russian dominion. The Russians called it a 
voluntary submission, and said " they would send an 
officer to administer the government." But instead of 
an officer an army went, which held the whole population 
as in a vice. Along this Western road there is no natural 
impediment to an attack upon India. A range of hills 
less than a thousand feet high, easily accessible to artillery, 
is all that lies between the Russians and Herat, the 
Gate of India. From this, the road lies through fertile 
plains and easy passes to the Western limits of the British 
dominions. Nor did the Russians stop at Merv. An 
English commission was sent to adjust the boundaries of 
Afghanistan with the Russians, but the latter, without 



52 Slav or Saxon. 

waiting for the commission to do its work, advanced upon 
Herat, in two directions, by the valley of the Murghab 
to Penjdeh, and by the Hari-Rud to Pul-i-khatum. To 
justify their encroachments upon the territory of the 
Afghans, they set up a claim that the frontier of Afghan- 
istan was fifty miles South of that shown by their own 
maps as late as 1881, and that Penjdeh and the Zulfikar 
Pass were North of the line. Penjdeh, in fact, had always 
belonged to Afghanistan and paid tribute to the Ameer. 

The Russian railway is already completed to a point 
only a few hundred miles distant from the railway sys- 
tem of India, and the rapidity of communication from 
Russia to the probable scene of the conflict (six days) 
from the South of Russia to the centre of Asia) gives her 
a great advantage in concentrating troops over England, 
who must resort to a long and tedious line of communi- 
cation by sea. Persia is little more than a vassal state ; 
Russia can count upon its support as well as upon that of 
the wild tribes of Asia, when the prize of the immense 
booty of India is placed before their imagination as the 
reward of conquest. The prestige of Russia among 
Asiatic peoples is immense. Witness the following ex- 
tract from the Persian '* Akhtar " : 

During the last thirty years a great deal has been said and 
written by a large portion of the English press and influential 
statesmen about the growing hostility between Great Britain 
and Russia. But as yet they have done nothing, and the Rus- 
sians know very well that, apart from these threats, empty out- 
cries, and unsuccessful protests, they have nothing to fear 
from the English. The Russians, therefore, have not heeded 



Russian Cojiquests and Aggressions. 53 

in the least this flood of empty words, and have proceeded un- 
disturbed and unchecked in the carrying out of their plans. 
The English have always and everywhere pursued their own 
interests of state, and, in our opinion, the Russians are much 
more justified in the pursuit of similar objects, if we consider 
their close proximity to the Mohammedan countries in ques- 
tion. Besides, Russia possesses greater power and authority 
than England. She has a better right to undertake conquests, 
because she shows a greater respect for the laws and rights of 
the natives than England, who, as we have seen, is meddling 
in the most shameless manner with the affairs of India, Aden, 
Cyprus, Afghanistan, Egypt, Zanzibar, and Beloochistan. 

Makdum Kali, a Turkonrian bard, predicted not long 
ago, that the whole of the world would succumb to the 
power of Russia. This is the Asiatic idea of it. It is 
true, the Russians have frequently declared they have no 
designs on India, but in 1882 M. DeGiers said that 
they had no intention of occupying Merv and Sarakhs, 
both of which are to-day Russian cities. We know, more- 
over, that Skobeleff actually forwarded to General Kauf- 
mann, during the last Turkish war, a plan for a campaign 
in Central Asia and for exciting against England not only 
Afghanistan but her own native subjects in India, and 
that Kaufmann's military preparations for this purpose 
had commenced, but were stopped when the Berlin 
treaty was signed. What would be the conduct of the 
Indian subjects of Her Majesty, in case of an invasion, is 
very uncertain. English rule in India is no doubt bene- 
ficial. The people are gradually submitting to the in- 
fluences of modern civilization, but this process, being 



54 Slav or Saxon. 

mostly voluntary, goes on much more slowly than the 
Russianizing of the tribes of Tartary, and is much less 
radical. The prejudices of the native populations are very 
deep-seated, nor can they wholly forget, however salutary 
English rule may be at present, that England was guilty 
of most unpardonable wrongs in the past. The English 
do not assimilate with them, do not intermarry, they are 
an alien race. Very few of them reside permanently in 
the country. An Englishman always looks forward to 
the time when he shall return. The absenteeism which 
has been the foundation of so much dissatisfaction in 
Ireland, exists also in India. The natives feel that they 
are being exploited for the benefit of Englishmen, and 
however beneficial the process may be to them, they do 
not like to have good done to them in this way against 
their will. This, together with the continually increasing 
vacillation of the home government from party changes 
and otherwise, weakens greatly the power of Great Britain 
to defend her Asiatic possessions. 



CHAPTER VI. 

DESIGNS UPON CHINA, MANCHURIA, AND KOREA. 

The designs of Russia upon India and Constantinople 
have been suspended at the present time in favor of her 
still more vast designs upon the Chinese empire. The 
possession of this empire would secure to her an undoubted 
supremacy, not only in Asia, but in the whole Eastern con- 
tinent and in the world. If Russia can make the vast 
population of China a part of her military system she 
need fear no rival upon earth. 

Let us consider in some detail the character and conse- 
quences of the Russian designs upon the Chinese empire. 

What are the extent, population, and resources of that 
empire ? 

It embraces a territory nearly three times the size of 
our own republic. It contains a population of nearly 
four hundred millions — nearly one fourth the population 
of the whole world. 

What is the character of the land ? 

In the West lie the desert plains of Mongolia, the moun- 
tains and the table land of Thibet. But the Eastern half 
of the empire is a territory unexcelled in fertility and re- 
sources — Manchuria to the North, and China proper in 

55 



56 Slav or Saxon. 

the South. Manchuria is already practically under the 
dominion of Russia. It is to be traversed by Russian 
railroads ; the seacoast is already Russian ; Russian influ- 
ence predominates everywhere. It is a rich country with 
a fertile soil and a climate similar to that of Canada, with 
navigable rivers, fine forests, and valleys well adapted 
to the culture of wheat, barley, rice, hemp, indigo, and 
tobacco ; a land well filled with live-stock, and containing 
abundant mineral resources. 

China proper, with a climate like our own, is one of the 
most fertile regions on the globe. The fact that it sup- 
ports a population of three hundred and fifty millions is 
proof of this. North of the Yellow River, the most im- 
portant crops are millet and barley. In the central and 
southern districts, rice and wheat thrive well ; tea, cot- 
ton, sugar, oranges, bamboo, and silk are important 
products. The West abounds in valuable timber. The 
mineral wealth of the country is mostly undeveloped, but 
it is very great. Iron ore in vast quantities is found in 
many places far removed from each other, indicating a 
wide distribution. There is gold in many provinces, 
copper and lead in Southern China, and extensive salt 
works in the North. The coal mines are inexhaustible. 
In the province of Shansi coal is sold at the mine at thir- 
teen cents a ton. There is more coal in that province 
alone than in Pennsylvania. Tea and silk are still the 
largest products for foreign export. So rich is the land 
and so varied the climate that there is probably no pro- 
duct of our own country which cannot be produced in 
China. 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 57 

What is the character of the four hundred millions of 
human beings which the Chinese empire contains ? 

In the Northwest we have the Mongols, descendants of 
Genghis Khan, who some centuries ago conquered the 
whole of Asia, as well as most of European Russia. In 
Thibet we have a race of hardy mountaineers. In Man- 
churia we find a people, vigorous, thrifty, intelligent, 
conservative, a people which has three times conquered 
China itself. The Manchu dynasty reigns in China to- 
day. 

But it is with the Chinese proper, who form the bulk 
of the population of the Empire, that we are most con- 
cerned. " Among the various races of mankind, the 
Chinese is the only one which in all climates, the hottest 
and the coldest, is capable of great and lasting activity." 
" The predominant quality of the Chinaman is his in- 
dustry. He has almost a passion for labor. In search of 
it he compasses sea and land." In addition to his power 
of endurance, his manual dexterity in the minutest kinds 
of handicraft is well known. His intellectual character- 
istics are peculiar, and in some respects very high. His 
memory is phenomenal. There are Chinamen who can 
repeat by heart all the thirteen classics of China. The 
Chinamen who come to study in our colleges are intelli- 
gent. The Chinese have untiring patience, unfailing 
good humor and cheerfulness under every kind of dis- 
comfort and bodily toil. They are greatly lacking in 
originality, in the power of initiative. They are the 
slaves of custom and conservatism. They will be an im- 
mense power under skilful leadership; they are helpless 



58 Slav or Saxon. 

without it. The spirit of the Chinaman is essentially 
commercial. He is a tradesman. He sells his labor and 
everything he possesses for a price. He is shrewd at a 
bargain. He can undersell his competitors. He is eco- 
nomical to the last degree, although he will purchase 
comforts and luxuries when he can afford them. In com- 
mercial thriftiness he resembles the Jew. " His instinc- 
tive habit is one of perpetual appraisement. He thinks 
in money." The co-operative spirit is very strong in 
him. Guilds, mutual-benefit societies, and all sorts of 
associations fill an important space in the life of the 
Chinese. The price of Chinese labor is very low. A 
coolie can be employed at from six dollars to eight dol- 
lars a month. An artisan's wages vary from ten to twenty 
cents a day. He works nine hours a day, and lives almost 
entirely on rice and vegetables. Under proper direction 
the industrial capabilities of such a people will exceed 
that of any other race existing in the world. Moreover 
the people of China are easily managed. They are essen- 
tially tractable and peaceful. Although they care nothing 
for politics, the faculty of local self-government and 
especially of family government is developed in a high 
degree. It is the central government at Pekin, and the 
government of the viceroys and mandarins which is at 
fault. And the numerous secret societies, conspiracies, 
and sometimes rebellions in China are the result of the 
atrocious corruption and oppression of the central gov- 
ernment, for which there is no other remedy. Under a 
skilful ruler the Chinese can be easily controlled. 

In the late war with Japan the Chinese proved them- 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 59 

selves to be poor soldiers, but they were sent against the 
Japanese practically unarmed, unpaid, and badly fed, 
under commanders conspicuous for cowardice. Under 
European officers they are brave and efficient. Chinese 
Gordon could lead them anywhere. Dewey has recom- 
mended the Chinese of his fleet to full American citizen- 
ship on account of their bravery in the battle of Manila. 
The willingness of Chinamen to undergo even capital 
punishment as the hired substitutes of others, the con- 
stant readiness to die when the need arises, indicate that 
the Chinese race has courage of a high order if properly 
directed. The men of Manchuria and Shan-Tung are 
steady, docile, enduring, uncomplaining, and of splendid 
physique. The men from Hunan are dashing, courage- 
ous, and loyal to their own leaders. It is not hard to 
see that under the command of efficient Europeans a 
Chinese army, if well armed, well paid, and well treated, 
would be an efficient fighting machine. 

Perhaps the greatest defect in the Chinese character is 
the lack of patriotism. A Chinaman is deeply devoted 
to his family and his national customs, but cares nothing 
for the dynasty or the government. This is indeed little 
to be wondered at since the national government takes 
small care of him except to tax him and to extort by 
every possible kind of " squeeze " all that can be got out 
of his hard-earned savings. Indeed the lack of progress 
in China is due more to the corruption of the government 
than to perhaps any other cause. The roads and means 
of communication are suffered to fall into neglect. The 
transportation of food, clothing, and other products in 



6o Slav or Saxon. 

the inland provinces is almost impossible. Dreadful fa- 
mines have occurred in China, depopulating vast regions, 
while neighboring provinces had abundance of resources. 
The Chinese officials levy duties and charges at various 
points in transit, thus obstructing all commerce, while 
very little of the revenue reaches the national treasury. 
Official corruption is so universal that it passes without 
remark or censure, while the integrity of the Chinese 
merchants and bankers and their fidelity to contracts has 
become proverbial. 

It is over such a people as this, easily won by corrup- 
tion, easily subdued in war, that Russia seeks to extend 
the strong arm of her autocracy. 

She has already accomplished much in the way of 
territorial acquisition and still more in the way of politi- 
cal influence and domination. As early as 1858 Muravieff 
obtained for Russia the Amoor province, a vast tract on 
the north bank of that River. And in i860. General 
Ignatieff, by diplomacy, secured for Russia the whole 
Eastern coast of Manchuria from the Amoor River down 
to the Northern boundary of Korea. In this territory the 
Russian port of Vladivostock was established, now one of 
the termini of the trans-Siberian Railway. 

During the war between China and Japan in 1894, a 
surprising fact was revealed to the world. The enormous 
"latent power" attributed to the Chinese Empire, the 
"Yellow Peril," which it was feared might some time 
overwhelm the civilization of the West, proved to be an 
iridescent bubble pricked by Japan in a campaign of a 
few short months. The war had been commenced on 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea, 6i 

behalf of the independence of Korea, a country which 
Japan was determined to keep within the sphere of her 
own influence, but when, after defeats on land and sea, 
China was brought to her knees to beg for peace, not 
only was she compelled to renounce all claims upon that 
kingdom and to pay a large indemnity, but also to cede 
to Japan the island of Formosa and the Pescadores 
group, as well as the important Liao-tung peninsula, a 
portion of Manchuria situated at the Northern extremity 
of the Yellow Sea, and commanding the gulf of Pe-chi-li, 
the outlet of Pekin and Tien-tsin. The treaty of Shimo- 
noseki ceding this territory was signed in April, 1895, and 
ratified on May 8th of the same year. 

There are two harbors of great importance on the Liao- 
tung, — Port Arthur, of considerable strategic value, and 
Talien-wan, of high commercial value. These ports are 
open throughout the winter, and were coveted by Russia 
as furnishing her best outlet to the Pacific. 

Russian diplomacy now secured the co-operation of 
France and Germany in a declaration to Japan, that her 
retention of the Liao-tung, with the stronghold of Port 
Arthur, would be regarded as a threat to the independ- 
ence of China and Korea, and a danger to the peace of 
the Far East, and Japan was made to understand that, if 
necessary, these powers would take from her by force this 
conquered territory. So quickly did the intrigues of Rus- 
sia attain their object that only two days after the ratifica- 
tion of the treaty ceding the Liao-tung, Japan was forced 
to resign it. It was a bitter draught, but she swal- 
lowed it without complaint or protest, and the Mikado's 



62 Slav or Saxon. 

rescript of May lo, 1895, announced to his people that 
he had accepted the "friendly" advice received, and re- 
nounced the possession of the peninsula. Japan sought 
to obtain from China a pledge that the territory thus 
given back should never pass into the hands of a third 
power, but she had to waive that point, being assured 
not only that Russia had no designs upon Manchuria, but 
would resent the imputation that she had such designs. 

But it soon became clear that Russia had forbidden 
Japan to keep the Liao-tung, for the reason that she in- 
tended to acquire it herself. Its possession by Japan 
might be a menace to the peace of the East, but no 
scruples on that score prevented its acquisition by the 
great Empire of the North. Russia had posed as the 
defender of China against Japanese encroachments, had 
aided China in securing a reduction of the interest of 
the Chinese war debt, had guaranteed a loan made by 
the Chinese Government, and now claimed her promised 
reward for all these favors. 

It is believed that the first concessions made by China 
to Russia were contained in a secret agreement made in 
1895 and known as the "Cassini Convention," the text 
of which was published by the North China Daily News. 
Russia has denied this convention, but subsequent events 
have apparently shown that some such agreement paved 
the way for stipulations that were afterwards carried out, 
so that little doubt now exists upon the subject. This 
convention conceded to Russia, "as a response to the 
loyal aid given by Russia to China in the retrocession of 
Liao-tung," the right to prolong the Siberian Railway 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 63 

into Chinese territory, crossing the Northern part of 
Manchuria to Vladivostock, the control to be in the 
hands of Russia for thirty years, at the end of which 
time China might redeem the road, but the method of~ 
redemption was left for future consideration. 

If China should find it inconvenient to build another 
railroad from Niu-chwang to Mukden, connecting with 
the Manchurian railway, she was to allow Russia to pro- 
vide the funds therefor, and was to have the right to 
redeem the road at the end of ten years. Since these 
railways would pass through barren and sparsely in- 
habited territory, Russia might place special battalions 
of horse and foot soldiers at the important stations for 
the better protection of the property. Russians, as well 
as Chinese subjects, might also exploit the mines in two 
of the Northern provinces of Manchuria; should China 
need to reform her army organization, she might engage 
Russian military officers for the purpose ; and since Russia 
had never possessed a seaport in Asia free from ice, China 
was willing to lease Kiao-chao for fifteen years, although 
if there were no military operations requiring this port, 
Russia would not enter into possession, so as not to excite 
the jealotisy of other powers. China was to fortify Port 
Arthur and Talien-wan, but Russia should help to protect 
these two ports, and not permit any foreign power to en- 
croach on them, nor should China ever cede them to 
another country, and if Russia should be suddenly in- 
volved in war, China would allow her temporarily to con- 
centrate her land and naval forces within these ports. 

Such were the alleged provisions of the adroit agree- 



64 Slav or Saxon. 

ment, by means of which Russia obtained her original 
foothold in Manchuria. But whether or not the stipula- 
tions of the "Cassini Convention" are authentic, the rail- 
way concessions contained in it were afterwards covered 
by an open convention dated September 8, 1896, which 
took the harmless form of an agreement between the 
Chinese Government and the Russo-Chinese Bank, ap- 
parently a mere private corporation, and provided for the 
formation of another private corporation, "The Eastern 
Chinese Railway Company," to construct and operate a 
railway through Manchuria to Vladivostock, connecting 
with the Siberian railway. This company was also em- 
powered to exploit upon Chinese territory other enter- 
prises, mining, industrial, and commercial. None but 
Russians and Chinese could become stockholders. Goods 
imported or exported by rail should pay one third less 
duty than that imposed at Chinese seaport custom-houses, 
and goods in transit were exempt from other Chinese dues 
and taxes. China undertook to secure the railway against 
extraneous attacks, but the preservation of order on land 
assigned to the railway was confided to police agents ap- 
pointed by the company. After thirty-six years from the 
completion of the lines, the Chinese Government might 
acquire them by refunding all outlays, with accrued inter- 
est, and after eighty years that Government might take pos- 
session of the road without making any payment whatever. 
But in reality at the time of this agreement the "Russo- 
Chinese Bank" was the financial agent of the Russian 
Government, and the capital for the building of the road 
came practically from the Russian treasury. 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 65 

But neither by the Cassini Convention, nor by the agree- 
ment with the Russo-Chinese Bank, was there included 
that part of the road running through the Liao-tung 
peninsula down to Port Arthur and Talien-wan. An 
event which occurred in 1897 led to the direct acquisition 
of these ports by Russia. Two German missionaries had 
been murdered by the Chinese in the province of Shan- 
tung. Germany demanded reparation, but the negotia- 
tions were delayed. Finally, on November of that year, 
the Germans seized the port of Kiao-chao, and afterwards 
secured from China a lease of that port for ninety-nine 
years, together with certain railway concessions and with 
the right to erect fortifications and to conduct an admin- 
istrative government. Now Kiao-chao was the port 
which China was to lease to Russia by the terms of the 
"Cassini Convention." If this port was to go to Ger- 
many, Russia must have an equivalent. But quite apart 
from that convention, if the seizure of the Liao-tung pen- 
insula by Japan was objectionable to Russia, the seizure 
of Kiao-chao by Germany was equally objectionable, 
unless Russia could have her compensation. She made 
an immediate representation of her claim to China, and 
at once carried her project into execution. The lease to 
Germany was made March 6, 1898, and on March 27th 
Russia secured a lease of Port Arthur and Talien-wan, 
with a right to construct a railroad thereto. Port Arthur 
was to be a naval port for the sole use of Russian and 
Chinese men-of-war; and not open to the vessels of other 
nations. One portion of the harbor of Talien-wan was 
also to be closed in like manner, but the remainder was to 



66 Slav or Saxon. 

be a commercial port open to the vessels of all countries, 
Russia was to have the right to erect fortifications on the 
leased territory ; she at once began to fortify it perma- 
nently, and by the end of 1898 she had twenty thousand 
men at Port Arthur and Talien-wan. At the same time 
she gave assurances that the privileges guaranteed by 
China to other powers should not be infringed, and that 
no interference with Chinese sovereignty was contem- 
plated. Then Great Britain claimed a corresponding 
equivalent and secured a similar lease of the port of Wei- 
hai-wei on the coast of Shantung. 

In 1900 came the Boxer uprising; the murder of the 
German Ambassador, von Ketteler; the siege of the 
legations at Pekin ; the joint relief expedition of the Great 
Powers ; the flight of the Chinese Emperor and the Dow- 
ager Empress to Si-ngan-fu ; the administration of Pekin 
by the allied powers under Count Waldersee ; the sup- 
pression of the Boxers; the submission of the Chinese 
Government to the terms proposed; the indemnity as- 
sumed ; the withdrawal of the powers and the return of 
the Chinese court to Pekin. Shortly after the beginning 
of this outbreak the Boxers in Northern Manchuria began 
a futile bombardment of the Russian town of Blagovest- 
chensk, lying on the north bank of the Amur River; the 
railroad which the Russians were constructing through 
Manchuria was partially destroyed, and other outrages 
were committed. The Russians made dreadful reprisals 
in the massacre of the unarmed Chinese population in 
Blagovestchensk, and in a military expedition to Man- 
churia, in which they conquered in a short campaign the 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 67 

Northern portion of that province, burning the towns and 
villages, and putting the inhabitants to the edge of the 
sword. They also seized other places in the Southern 
part of the province, among these the important port of 
Niu-chwang, which had been opened by treaty to the 
trade of all nations; in fact, nearly the whole of Man- 
churia fell under Russian control. 

A circumstance which occurred during these events 
excited the apprehension of the powers that were acting 
jointly with Russia in the occupation of the Chinese 
capital. On August 14, 1900, General Grodekoff, Gov- 
ernor-General of the Amur province, telegraphed the 
Russian Minister of War that the Czar's troops had con- 
quered the right bank of the Amur, "thus consolidating 
the great enterprise of annexing the whole of the Amur 
to Russian dominions, and making that river an internal 
waterway and not a frontier stream." The Russian 
Government found it desirable to remove the impression 
of that announcement by issuing, on August 25th, a 
circular to its diplomatic representatives, declaring as 
"fundamental principles" of policy for the guidance of 
the powers "the removal of everything that could lead 
to a partition of the Celestial Empire," and added: "As 
soon as lasting order shall have been established in Man- 
churia, and indisputable measures shall have been taken 
for the construction of the railway, Russia will not fail 
to recall her troops from these territories of the neigh- 
boring empire, provided that the action of the other 
powers does not place any obstacle in the way of such 
a measure." But military operations continued with 



68 Slav or Saxon. 

increasing vigor. The Russian troops withdrawn from 
Pekin were sent to Manchuria. A military force of 
twelve thousand railway guards was established, and in 
November large naval reinforcements were dispatched to 
the Far East. 

Admiral Alexeieff now invited China to reassume the 
administration of Manchuria "under the protection of 
Russia," and on November ii, 1900, he made an agree- 
ment with Tseng Chi, the Tartar general, for the resump- 
tion by the Chinese of civil government in Feng-tien, the 
Southern part of that province. The Tartar general was 
to provide the Russian troops with lodging and pro- 
visions, to disarm and disband all Chinese soldiers, to 
hand over all arms and ammunition to the Russians, and 
dismantle all forts not occupied by the Russians. A 
Russian Resident with general powers was to be stationed 
at Mukden. Order was to be maintained by the local 
police under the Tartar general, who, in case of emer- 
gency, was to appl)^ to the Resident for Russian rein- 
forcements. 

At this point the British Ambassador at St. Peters- 
burg, Sir Charles Scott, made an enquiry of Count 
Lamsdorff, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, as 
to the meaning of the rumored arrangements, and he 
thus reports the answer of Count Lamsdorff, who, on 
February 6, 1901, authorized its publication as an accu- 
rate statement of his language : 

He said as far as he had read the allegations in the press 
which would probably give rise to questions in Parliament, 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 69 

they had asserted that Russia had concluded, or was engaged 
in concluding, with China, a convention or permanent 
arrangement which would give Russia new rights and a 
virtual protectorate in Southern Manchuria. 

This was quite untrue, and the only ground for the rumor 
must have been the fact that the Russian military authorities 
who had been engaged in the temporary occupation and 
pacification of that province had been directed, when reinstat- 
ing the Chinese authorities in their former posts, to arrange 
with the local civil authorities the terms of a modus vivendi 
between them for the duration of the simultaneous presence 
of Russian and Chinese authorities in Southern Manchuria, 
the object being to prevent the recurrence of disturbances in 
the vicinity of the Russian frontier, and to protect the railway 
from the Russian frontier to Port Arthur. 

Some of the details of the proposed modus vivendi had been 
sent for consideration to St. Petersburgh, but no convention 
or arrangement with the Central Government of China or of 
a permanent character had been concluded with regard to 
Manchuria, nor had the Emperor any intention of departifig in 
any way from the assurances which he had publicly given that 
Manchuria would be entirely restored to its former condition in 
the Chinese Empire as soon as circumstances admitted. 

Russia was in the same position with regard to fixing a final 
date for evacuating Manchuria as the allies found themselves 
with regard to the evacuation of Peking and the province of 
Pe-chi-li. 

When it came to the final and complete evacuation of Man- 
churia, the Russian Government would be obliged to obtain 
from the Central Government of China an effective guarantee 
against the recurrence of the recent attack on her frontier and 
the destruction of her railway, but had no intention of seeking 



70 Slav or Saxon. 

this guarantee In any acquisition of territory or in an actual or 
virtual protectorate over Manchuria, the object being simply 
to guarantee the faithful observance in the future by China of 
the terms of the agreement which she had been unable to 
fulfil during the disturbances. 

Within a few weeks after these representations of Count 
Lamsdorff, it was learned that the Russian Government 
was pressing the Chinese Government for a new agree- 
ment under which, in order to recover the administration 
of Manchuria, China was to recognize Russian military 
occupation, and cede important privileges, not only in 
Manchuria, but in Mongolia, Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, 
and Turkestan, generally it being provided that China 
should grant to no other power advantages relative to 
mines, railways, or other matters, in these provinces, nor 
should she construct her own railways therein, without 
the consent of Russia. Moreover, leases of land in Man- 
churia, outside of Niu-chwang, should not be granted to 
the subjects of any other power. 

The United States, Great Britain, and Japan now pro- 
tested against this agreement. The Chinese court was 
still a fugitive at Si-ngan-fu. Russia claimed that the 
proposed agreement was only of a temporary character 
intended to facilitate the withdrawal of Russian forces, 
but China refused to sign it. On April 3, 1901, Russia 
announced that the negotiations were abandoned. 

Her circular containing this announcement declared 
that the Imperial Government, "while remaining faithful 
to its original and repeated public programmes, would 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. yi 

quietly await the further course of events." In the sum- 
mer of 1901, however, Russia made other demands upon 
China to secure special privileges in Manchuria for the 
Russo-Chinese Bank. The United States, Great Britain, 
and Japan again protested on the ground that an arrange- 
ment by which China gave to any corporation exclusive 
rights in the industrial development of Manchuria would 
be a distinct breach of the treaties between China and 
other foreign powers, and would tend to impair the sove- 
reign rights of China in that part of her empire ; therefore 
the privileges dem.anded were withheld. 

On January 30, 1902, a treaty was concluded between 
England and Japan recognizing the independence of 
China and Korea, but declaring that there were special 
interests of Great Britain in China, and of Japan, not 
only in China, but politically, commercially, and indus- 
trially, in Korea, and that each party might take measures 
to safeguard these interests, if threatened by any other 
power. If either Great Britain or Japan, in defence of 
these interests, should become involved in war with 
another power, the other party must maintain strict 
neutrality, and use its efforts to prevent other powers 
from joining in hostilities against its ally. If other pow- 
ers should so join, it would come to its ally's assistance; 
they would conduct the war in common, and make peace 
only by mutual agreement. 

It was undoubtedly this treaty that placed Japan in a 
position where she could alone undertake a war against 
Russia. 

On April 8, 1902, a convention was made between the 



72 Slav or Saxon. 

Russian and Chinese Governments concerning the restora- 
tion of Manchuria, by which Russia agreed to return to 
China the right of re-estabhshing governmental and ad- 
ministrative power in Manchuria, and China confirmed 
the contract with the Russo-Chinese Bank, for the con- 
struction of the Manchurian railway, and agreed to pro- 
tect the railway and to insure the security of all Russian 
subjects in Manchuria. 
Russia agreed — 

Should no troubles arise and should the mode of action of the 
other Govermnents not hinder it, to withdraw gradually all its 
troops from the confines of Manchuria in such a manner that: 

(a) Within six months after the signature of the convention 
there is to be an evacuation by Russian troops of the South- 
western part of the Mukden province up to the river Liao-khe, 
and a transfer of the railways to China. 

(b) Within the next six months the remainder of the Muk- 
den province and the province of Kirin are to be evacuated 
by the Imperial forces. 

(c) Within the following six months the province of Heh- 
lung-kiang is to be evacuated by the remaining Imperial 
troops. 

The Russian military authorities and the Tartar gen- 
eral were jointly to agree as to the numerical strength 
and distribution of Chinese troops in Manchuria until 
the Russians evacuated it, and the Chinese Government 
further agreed not to organize any other troops in addi- 
tion to those agreed upon by the Russian military authori- 
ties and the Tartar general. 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 73 

The Russian Government consented to return to the 
owners the railway lines Shan-hai-kwan — Niu-chwang — 
Hsin-min-ting, occupied and protected by Russian troops 
from the beginning of September, 1900, and China 
agreed : 

Should there be a necessity of protecting the above-men- 
tioned lines, this obligation would be imposed upon the 
Chinese Government alone, no other Government to be invited 
to take part in the protection, construction, and exploitation of 
these lines, nor foreign powers allowed to occupy the territory 
evacuated by the Russians. 

A careful examination of these provisions reveals the 
fact that they were adroitly contrived to give the appear- 
ance of a promise to evacuate without, in fact, literally 
promising anything, that they were calculated to involve 
the Chinese Government in responsibilities it could not 
meet, and that they opened the field to future claims and 
encroachments on the part of Russia to an unlimited 
degree. 

The Russian Government promised to evacuate three 
separate sections of Manchuria by October 8, 1902, April 
8, 1903, and October 8, 1903, respectively, but only on 
condition that no troubles should arise and that the mode 
of action of other Governments did not hinder it. 

The disturbed territory was occupied jointly by Rus- 
sian and Chinese authorities. "Troubles" were almost 
certain, and were bound to arise if provoked by the Rus- 
sians, yet in that event Russia was not required to 
evacuate. 



74 Slav or Saxon. 

But even if the Chinese abstained from every collision, 
still Russia was not required to evacuate, if the mode of 
action of other Governments should hinder it, and Russia, 
of course, had to determine what mode of action by other 
Governments would hinder such evacuation. Would the 
pretensions of Japan upon Korea hinder it? Would the 
repression by the powers of some Boxer uprising in 
China prevent it? Was the Anglo- Japanese treaty a bar 
to evacuation? A thousand pretexts might be made. 

By one article of the treaty with Russia the Chinese 
Government was to protect the railway and insure the 
safety of Russians in Manchuria, yet by another article 
the Russians were to say how many troops it should be 
permitted to employ for the purpose! By still another 
article the Chinese were not to allow foreign powers to 
occupy any territory evacuated by the Russians. Under 
this provision it might easily be claimed that if the 
Japanese should occupy any part of Manchuria, no 
matter how helpless the Chinese might be to prevent 
it, the agreement would be broken, and Russia might 
send an army to Pekin! No better illustration can be 
found than this treaty, of language fitted to enable those 
who use it 

' ' To keep the word of promise to the ear 
And break it to the hope." 

Certainly, if the above treaty was made in good faith, 
Manchuria should long since have been evacuated. 
There have been no violent disorders, and it is hard to 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 75 

see what action of any other powers really hindered this 
evacuation ; yet Russia remained after the periods pre- 
scribed in her agreement. 

No objection was made by any of the other powers to 
this treaty. Even Japan considered it preferable to the 
uncertainties following the absence of any agreement. If 
Russia had complied with the spirit as well as the letter 
of her treaty, and had refrained from encroachments 
upon Korea, there would have been no cause for a rup- 
ture between her and Japan. By October 8, 1902, Rus- 
sia had withdrawn, according to her agreement, from the 
Southwestern portion of Mukden province, but this was 
done by merely shifting her garrisons to the neighborhood 
of the Manchurian railway, where they remained to guard 
the line. In the words of the Novoe Vremya : "It is said 
we are leaving Manchuria, but those on the spot have 
a totally different impression, and it seems as if we had 
only just begun to settle down there in real earnest." 
When April 8, 1903, had arrived, the time fixed for with- 
drawal from the remainder of Mukden province and the 
province of Kirin, nothing was done to carry out Russia's 
agreement, and it was announced that Russia was de- 
manding further concessions from China; in other words, 
Russia would not fulfil the conditions of her own treaty 
until she received something additional from the other 
side! The Chinese Government wisely declined to enter 
into any more agreements. 

One of the conditions which Russia sought to impose 
for her evacuation affected the treaty rights of other 
powers at the port of Niu-chwang, which should' have 



76 Slav or Saxon. 

been evacuated by April 8th. Inquiries were, therefore, 
made by Great Britain as to the intentions of the Russian 
Government, and Russia at first attempted to deny that 
she was imposing conditions upon China, and then tried 
to explain them away. 

On April 30th, Lord Cranborne stated in the House of 
Commons that Russia disclaimed all intention of seeking 
exclusive privileges in Manchuria, or of departing from the 
assurances given in respect to that province. 

Her troops, however, remained in the territory which 
they had promised to evacuate, and on May nth Lord 
Cranborne stated that in reply to communications ad- 
dressed to Russia by the Governments of the United 
States and Great Britain, Russia had intimated that it 
still adhered to its agreement to evacuate Manchuria, 
though the evacuation had been temporarily delayed. 
This delay was, however, indefinitely prolonged. October 
8th passed, the date for final evacuation, and Russia still 
remained, and by the end of October a Russian force 
actually re-occupied Mukden, while new troops were 
continually sent from Russia across Siberia to Manchuria 
and ships were dispatched to strengthen the Russian 
fleet in the Yellow Sea. 

On October 8, 1903, the date fixed for Russia's with- 
drawal from Manchuria, two treaties were made by the 
Chinese Government, one with Japan and the other with 
the United States. These treaties provided for the open- 
ing of the Manchurian towns of Mukden, Antung, and 
Tatung-kau as treaty ports. These treaties, in spite of 
Russia's opposition, were ratified in January, 1904, and 



Designs upo7i China, Manchuria, and Korea. 77 

Russia reiterated its assurances to the powers that their 
treaty rights would be respected. 

On October 8, 1903, when Russia finally made manifest 
to the world her purpose not to evacuate Manchuria, 
eight years and a half had passed since Japan had won by 
war the Liao-tung peninsula. During that time Russia 
had gradually entrenched herself in the territory which 
Japan was forced to abandon because her presence would 
be "a danger to the peace of the Far East." Russia 
had gathered the fruits of the war won by Japan. Port 
Arthur had become a formidable fortress, the naval base 
of a powerful fleet, and the headquarters of an army 
which Russia was sending from Europe in greater and 
greater numbers every year. The Siberian railway was 
completed, Port Arthur was its terminus and the seat of 
the Russian Viceroy in the East. 

It was hard enough for Japan to endure all this, but a 
greater danger threatened her. The peninsula of Korea 
projects into the Pacific Ocean and almost touches 
Japan. It furnishes the natural outlet for the surplus 
population of the Island Empire, a population of some 
forty-seven million, which, compressed within the small 
area of the archipelago, is so dense that it presses closely 
upon subsistence. This population is now increasing 
rapidly, for the birth-rate is very high, and while formerly 
the death-rate was also excessive, it has now become 
greatly diminished on account of the excellent sanitary 
arrangements enforced throughout the empire in recent 
years. 

Japan controls nine tenths of the commerce of Korea, 



78 Slav or Saxon. 

has long had a preponderating influence in the Korean 
Government, and is so intimately connected with the 
"Hermit Kingdom" that the possession of that kingdom 
by a formidable and unfriendly power would seriously 
threaten her own development. Korea, in the words of 
a Japanese statesman, is "like an arrow with the point 
aimed at our heart." Yet Russian territory bounds 
Korea immediately upon the North, and the Gulf of Pe- 
chi-li on the West, and in the heart of this gulf Russia is 
entrenched on the Liao-tung peninsula with her fleets, her 
fortifications, and her railway. Korea is bound to be- 
come Russian or Japanese, and the possession of Korea 
by Russia would be fatal to the welfare, perhaps to the 
very existence, of Japan. 

Moreover, Japan has aspirations to leadership in the 
East. She hopes for the reorganization of the Chinese 
Empire under Japanese initiative. The Japanese are in 
many ways well qualified for this task. They under- 
stand the Chinese, the languages of the two peoples 
are closely related, and some of their religions are the 
same. The Russians have a similar purpose with respect 
to China; they do not understand the Chinese so well as 
the Japanese do, but they understand them far better 
than do any of the other Western nations. Japanese 
and Russian officers have both been employed in the 
Chinese army. Japanese professors have been employed 
in the University of Pekin. The Russians have estab- 
lished an Oriental college at Vladivostock, to instruct 
diplomats and administrators in the languages and 
ways of Orientals. There is an inevitable conflict in the 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 79 

aspirations of the two nations for supremacy of influ- 
ence in China. If Russia should acquire Korea, the 
aspirations of Japan in respect to China would be forever 
quenched. 

It was in 1886 that Russia first appeared as a factor in 
Korean affairs. At that time Korea was largely under 
the influence of China, and the Chinese discovered that 
a plot was on foot to place her under Russian protection. 
Great Britain learned of these schemes and took posses- 
sion of Port Hamilton, but gave it up on receiving 
through China, from the Russian Charge d' Affaires at 
Pekin, "a sincere promise that if the British would evacu- 
ate Port Hamilton the Russian Government would not 
occupy Korean territory under any circumstances what- 
ever." In 1888, however, the frontier was opened to 
Russian traders by means of a commercial convention 
with Korea: the duties on imports coming overland 
across this frontier were made lower than for imports 
coming by sea, and it was provided that Russia might 
have "agents" (whatever that might mean) in Northern 
Korea. Telegraphic communication overland between 
the two countries was also established. 

The interior administration of Korea was execrable, 
and was continually disturbed by intrigues and revolts. 

The war with China was undertaken by Japan in 1894 
to obtain the independence of Korea, and immediately 
after that war Japanese influence in the peninsula was 
supreme. Japan, however, sent as her representative to 
Seoul General Miura, who carried things for a while with 
a high hand, A conspiracy was planned to seize the 



8o Slav or Saxon. 

King and Queen and hold them under Japanese protec- 
tion so as to gain undisputed control of the country. 
The attempt was actually made ; the Queen was murdered 
by a mob and the King was taken into custody, from 
which he escaped and took refuge, in February, 1896, at 
the Russian Legation, where he remained for a year. 
Then began the period of Russian ascendancy, and Korea 
secretly granted to M. Bryner, a Russian subject, the 
right to take timber on the banks of the Yalu River. 

On April 25, 1898, Japan and Russia signed the Nissi- 
Rosen Convention recognizing the sovereignty and inde- 
pendence of Korea, agreeing to abstain from interfering 
with the domestic affairs of the country, and to confer 
with each other in regard to any matters regarding which 
Korea should desire the counsel or assistance of either 
power, and Russia promised not to interfere with the in- 
dustrial and commercial relations between Japan and 
Korea. 

Japan now made rapid strides in securing industrial 
control of the peninsula. She procured a concession giv- 
ing her the first right to build railways in the country, 
and she at once began their construction. She estab- 
lished banks and undertook other commercial and indus- 
trial enterprises, and her interests in Korea, political as 
well as industrial, were expressly recognized in the treaty 
of 1902 between England and Japan. Her garrison of 
four hundred guards in Seoul was the chief guarantee of 
that city for the protection of the foreign legations. 

We have seen that a Russian subject acquired the right 
to fell timber in the Yalu valley, but this did not author- 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 8i 

ize the acquisition of land, and no concession whatever 
was made to the Russian Government. Yet, in May, 
1903, a small detachment of Russian troops crossed the 
Yalu and proceeded to Yonghampho in citizens' clothes. 
Here they purchased, in the name of two of their Korean 
employees, twelve acres of land, upon which they began 
to construct certain buildings. They were notified to 
leave, but the notice was ignored. Two months later it 
was announced that they had brought their wives and 
children, that they were wearing military uniforms, 
that some of them were carrying swords, that they 
were constructing a railroad and erecting stone embank- 
ments along the Yalu for a distance of twenty-one miles, 
and that they had begun to fell timber on Paing-ma 
Mountain, which was expressly excluded from their con- 
cession made by Korea. 

The Japanese Minister now informed the Korean Gov- 
ernment that if concessions to Russia were made Japan 
would consider it an unfriendly act. She also asked that 
the port of Wiju be thrown open to commerce, but Korea 
replied that Russia objected to this being done! 

Worst of all, just before the Boxer outbreak in 1900, 
Russia attempted to obtain a lease of Masampho, a 
stronghold on the Eastern coast of Korea, immediately 
opposite Japan, hardly more than a cannon-shot from 
Japanese territory. This attempt was made by the Rus- 
sian diplomatist, M. Pavloff, who had engineered the 
lease of Port Arthur, and M. Pavloff also urged upon the 
Korean Government that the ports of Masampho and 
Mokpho, now open by international treaty, should be 



82 Slav or Saxon. 

closed ! The Russians also attempted to secure a lease 
of Ching-kai-wan Bay, twenty miles from Masampho, 
and equally valuable for naval purposes, and she actually 
secured mining rights in Northern Korea. 

In August, 1903, Japan began negotiations with Russia 
in regard to the questions at issue in Manchuria and 
Korea. At this time it was announced that the Czar 
had formed his Eastern possessions into a vice-royalty, 
and that Admiral Alexeieff had been made viceroy. This 
act was of sinister significance for the future of Manchu- 
ria, and it was followed by the failure of Russia to evacu- 
ate that province on October 8th as she had promised in 
her treaty with China. 

Japan now insisted that Russia should concede to her 
in Korea the same rights which Russia herself claimed in 
Manchuria. As Russia maintained that the position she 
occupied did not violate the integrity and independence 
of the Chinese Empire, she was debarred from contend- 
ing that a similar position occupied by Japan in Korea 
would violate the integrity and independence of that 
country. Russia, on the other hand, was willing to rec- 
ognize (so said the Russian statements of January nth 
and February 9th) Japan's privileges and economic posi- 
tion in Korea, and would concede to her the right to pro- 
tect these by a temporary military force in the event of 
disturbances in that country, but she insisted on an un- 
dertaking by Japan to use no part of Korea for strategic 
purposes. She also insisted upon a neutral zone along 
the Northern portion of Korea, and it was announced that 
she refused to make any stipulations concerning Man- 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 83 

churia, alleging that she could not discuss any questions 
in regard to that province, since it belonged neither to 
Russia nor Japan. If this were so, it is hard to under- 
stand how either of the parties negotiating could discuss 
Korea, and the irony of the Russian position became 
evident when it was considered that she continued to 
control, by military force, a territory whose status she 
declined to discuss because it was the property of another. 

Russia delayed her answer to the final Japanese pro- 
posals nearly a month while both parties were preparing 
for the conflict. When Japan was ready, therefore, she 
broke off negotiations and struck the first blow. 

In the Mikado's declaration of war issued on February 
nth, he stated that Russia, in disregard of her solemn 
treaty pledges to China, and her repeated assurances to 
other powers, was still in occupation of Manchuria, had 
consolidated and strengthened her hold on that province, 
and was bent on its acquisition, and that the absorption 
of Manchuria by Russia would render it impossible to 
maintain the integrity of China, and would compel the 
abandonment of all hope of peace in the Far East. With 
fine poetic justice, Japan used in respect to Manchuria 
almost the exact words which Russia had used when she 
compelled Japan to give back to China part of this iden- 
tical territory, and it is not seen with what propriety 
Russia can complain of the application of this language 
to herself. 

It seems fortunate to the last degree that a new power 
should have come to the front which possesses the ad- 
vantages of a geographical situation, a military equipment, 



84 Slav or Saxon. 

and a spirit and determination which may enable her 
to stay, at least for a time, the progress of the Russian 
advance. The immense distance between Manchuria 
and European Russia, and the insuperable difficulties of 
transporting and maintaining, by means of a single-track 
railway, an army of the size required for this conflict, to- 
gether with the superiority of the Japanese at sea, make 
a possible outcome of the present war advantageous to 
the Japanese. But whatever the immediate result of the 
conflict, it will by no means finally decide the struggle 
for supremacy. 

The settlement of Eastern Siberia is to be the work of 
decades and generations to come. The construction of 
other railways across the plains of Northern Asia is only 
a matter of time. Russia may halt for a while in her 
march to the Pacific, but it may still be impossible to stay 
her in her progress over-land toward the borders of China 
and India, unless Japan herself shall in the meantime suc- 
ceed in re-organizing the vast population of China, and 
making of that population an engine of military defence 
as well as of industrial power. The ** Yellow Peril" 
which this may involve is far less dangerous than its al- 
ternative, the " Muscovite Peril," against which it fur- 
nishes the best and surest protection. 

For there is no doubt as to the final purpose of Russia 
in the conquest of the East. As early as September, 
1894, the Novosti suggested the partition of China. 
Prince Oukhtomsky, a friend of the Czar, laid stress upon 
" the inherent union and gradual confluence of Russia 
with the East." General Komaroff declared in the 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 85 

Sveit that " the East with all its countries, as China, 
Beloochistan, and even India, are by the will of Provi- 
dence destined for the Russian people." " Aspiring in 
Europe to the conquest of Constantinople, in Asia they 
consider themselves the heirs and successors of the great 
World conquerors, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane." This 
is not merely the ambition of the Czar, but it is the 
natural and irresistible impulse of the whole Russian 
people, a policy which will continue whoever may be the 
occupant of the throne. " Russia obeys a law of sun- 
ward and seaward gravitation accelerated by the ambition 
of her statesmen and officials, and resulting in a course of 
development which must progress until it encounters the 
opposition of a nation stronger and better than herself." 
Russia is admirably adapted to the task of absorbing and 
utilizing the vast industrial and military resources of 
China. Her own people are of mixed blood — half- 
Asiatics. They have already absorbed the vast Mon- 
golian population of European Russia and are absorbing 
the population of Turkestan. Their political institutions 
are not dissimilar, — small self-governing village communi- 
ties at the foundation of the social fabric and a central 
despotic authority at the apex. There is, however, this 
essential difference, — that in China the central author- 
ity is weak and paralyzed ; in Russia, it is practically 
omnipotent. The strong government of the autocrat, 
with its powerful initiative, is the one thing needed to 
transform the inert masses of China into the most power- 
ful human agency on earth. When the power of Russia 
is consolidated in China, India too must give way. 



86 Slav or Saxon. 

Russia will become the mistress of Asia, and then Asia 
will begin the conquest of Europe. There is absolutely 
no possibility of resisting Russian aggression unless the 
work is commenced at an early day. 

And the Russian domination would not be ephemeral 
and transitory. 

There is one element of endurance in the Russian dream 
which was wanting in those which have passed away into the 
vistas of history. It does not depend on the genius of one 
man, of an Alexander or a Napoleon ; nor on the politics of 
one generation. Russian ambition is a permanent plant, with 
its roots struck in the sentiments of over one hundred millions 
of people. It requires no originality in statesmanship, but 
proceeds like a cosmic movement, by its own laws, working 
automatically, the particular men who seem from time to time 
to be guiding it being but the accidents of the movement. 
Fast or slow makes no difference in the ultimate progress. 
Moreover, the Russian Empire is built territorily on more 
solid foundations than any other, ancient or modern. Every 
addition goes to enlarge its compact mass, leaving no inter- 
stice for hostile lodgment on its flanks. Nor need we search 
deeply into the history of nations to learn what advantages 
belong to the people who fight with their back to the north 
wind. To parley with such a force is like parleying with a 
tidal wave. Only a sea-wall of solid construction can set 
bounds to its inflow. 

We have shown at least the danger of future Russian 
domination under favourable circumstances; let us next 
consider what would be the effect upon mankind of the 
supremacy of Muscovite power. Let us look into the his- 



Designs upon China, Manchuria, and Korea. 87 

tory and the present condition of that great empire, that 
we may see, as nearly as possible, what the world would 
be if it should become subject to Russian influence. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

No one should open a history of Russia with the hope 
that he will get from it that gratification which most of 
the fields of modern history afford. There is less to attract 
our sympathy, less to inspire our enthusiasm, less fellow- 
feeling excited than in the struggle of the barons against 
John, of the Puritans against Charles, of the free cities of 
Italy against the imperialism of Germany, of the Dutch 
Republic against the bigotry of Philip. Somehow events 
seem to take the wrong track. As civilization grows, it 
appears only as a new bulwark of imperial power. As 
knowledge enters, it strengthens only the hand of the 
master and teaches him how to weave the more securely 
the toils which bind the slave. The development of agri- 
culture fastens the serf to the soil ; the opening of the 
mines adds new terrors to penal servitude ; the conquest 
of the boundless steppes of Siberia provides a new place 
for horrible punishments to be inflicted upon the subject 
who offends. The growth of Russia has been the growth 
of all that we detest. The great sovereigns of Russia 
have been greatest in crime and outrage. We learn in 
these pages that human progress is not universal, that the 



The History of Russia. 89 

eddies which turn back are strong and deep. We read of 
the overthrow of liberal institutions, the subjection of free 
cities, the annihilation of enlightened communities, for 
the sole reason that these became inconvenient or dan- 
gerous to arbitrary power. The chivalry, culture, and 
magnanimity which elsewhere so often throw a glamour 
over tyranny itself, and half reconcile us to its injustices, 
even they are absent from these gloomy pages. The 
naked form of force stands to-day, as of old, amid the 
gloomy rocks of Caucasus, and rivets the same iron 
through the Promethean breast of that free spirit that 
gives to mortals the fire which comes from heaven. 

Russian history has been wholly barren in all great in- 
tellectual struggles. It was a stranger to the Reforma- 
tion and to the Renaissance. Russia has no traditions. 
It has been a vast rural empire, a great state of peasant 
communities, ruled by a despot and his army. Even its 
church has little history in common with that of the rest 
of Europe. 

Another thing strikes us in Russian history : the people 
do not appear to have made their own history as else- 
where ; they have rather submitted to influences which 
they have had no hand in directing. It is a growth in- 
fluenced more by external than by internal causes. The 
normal development of the race has been hindered at 
every step ; the invasion of the Mongols stopped it in its 
youth and drove the civilization of Russia from its early 
European channel. Then its Mongolian development 
was stayed, and it was dragged back into the current of 
European life by the giant ^rrn of Peter the Great. 



90 Slav or Saxon, 

Let us review briefly the backward movement from 
freedom to autocracy. The first that we see of the early 
Slavs in history, we find them scattered in little villages, 
each village surrounded by its palisades and controlled 
by its communal village organization, the same which 
exists among the peasants down to the present time. 
This is called the mir. It is perhaps the most primitive 
form of organized social existence. Through all the 
changes which have taken place in higher organisms it has 
preserved its rudimentary character. 

In the formation of the autocracy, these village organi- 
zations, too small to be in the way, too weak to be feared, 
were suffered to remain in their old shape, like the proto- 
zoa which exist to-day, remnants of the earliest form of 
organic life, while the highly developed monsters of the 
Saurian age have long since disappeared. The mir, or 
village community, is made up of all full-grown males 
in the village, who are free from paternal authority. Each 
village is a tiny patriarchal republic. A meeting may be 
convened by any member. It is held out of doors, the 
utmost confusion prevails, there is no chairman, everybody 
talks at once, the crowd listens to whom it will. Before 
any thing can be done it must be agreed to by all. There 
is no such thing as the rule of a majority. The conclusion 
reached, whatever it may be, must, like the verdict of a 
jury or the resolutions of a Quaker-meeting, embody the 
sense of the whole assembly. They talk and convince 
each other, until one side or the other gives in. When 
opinions cannot be reconciled, they sometimes fall to 
berating each other, and a sound drubbing is occasionally 



The History of Russia. . 91 

the means of bringing about that harmony of thought 
which their usages require. While the present law of 
the empire permits a majority to control, the peasants do 
not follow any such plan, but adhere firmly to their 
ancient custom. In their discussions there is the fullest 
liberty of speech. Even political questions are some- 
times talked over by the peasants in their meetings, a 
thing which occurs nowhere else in Russia, and instances 
are known where the Starosta, their chief functionary, 
in the simplicity of his heart has read revolutionary pro- 
clamations which were fully considered, in utter ignorance 
that this was one of the highest crimes known to Rus- 
sian law. These village communities are remarkable for 
the humanity of many of their rural customs, the duty 
to help those unable to work, and other fraternal no- 
tions. The highest respect prevails for the decisions of 
the mir, which are absolute and final in all matters 
regulating their internal affairs. The Russian proverb 
is, " Whatever the mir decides, is ordained of God." 

Among the primitive Slavs there was no national union. 
They had little idea even of the unity of tribe. Such was 
their love of liberty that each village resisted all author- 
ity outside of itself. Of course no people could long 
exist with so little cohesive power. The Slavs were torn 
by dissensions. As they were unwilling to be ruled by 
any among themselves, a family of foreign princes was 
called upon to administer the government. These men 
(the Variagi, as they were termed) were probably of Scan- 
dinavian origin. The family of Rurik was the one from 
which the rulers were taken. At this time the larger 



92 Slav or Saxon. 

towns, which afterwards became the capitals of the prin- 
cipahties, were controlled in a naanner quite similar to the 
villages. The whole male population, rich and poor, were 
summoned at the call of any member. This assembly 
was called the vctcJie. When the princes of the House 
of Rurik came, they did not change this primitive form of 
organization ; they simply added to it an element of mil- 
itary power. The prince was accompanied by his driijina, 
or military household of fellow adventurers, who ate at 
his table and were his companions in battle. In many 
of the larger towns, the authority of the vetche was 
still practically paramount. The prince generally found 
it to his interest to rule in conformity to the will of 
the public assembly. In the House of Rurik, the eldest 
of the blood, whether son, brother, uncle, or other rela- 
tive, was chosen prince of the chief town ; but this rule 
was by no means inflexible. When the prince proved 
distasteful, the vetche assembled, and with the words 
" We salute thee, O Prince," " they showed him the way 
out," and he left with his driijina and sought another 
city, while the vetche' which had expelled him called 
another prince of the house more to their taste. When a 
prince died, the territory over which he had exercised this 
very limited sort of dominion was generally divided 
among a number of his relatives. As the princes grew in 
number, the communities over which they were called to 
rule also increased, until there grew up a sort of law of 
political supply and demand. The best cities got the 
best princes. The princes who were not satisfactory to 
the larger towns were compelled to hunt up smaller com- 



TJie History of Russia. 93 

munities that would take them for rulers. In some of 
the largest cities, before the prince could exercise any 
authority, he was required to enter into the riada, or 
written compact, which clearly set forth the rights of the 
people. This was the case at Novgorod and Pskov. In 
Kiev, the ancient capital of Russia, as well as in many 
smaller towns, his prerogatives were probably greater, and 
the influence of the vetche less. If no available prince 
of the House of Rurik could be found, the vetche some- 
times selected other persons, and once a simple boyar or 
noble of Russian blood was called upon to administer the 
government. 

It is easy to see that where the continuation of the 
prince's authority depended upon his performing his 
duties in a manner satisfactory to all the people, his 
government would be a popular one. Even his drujina, 
his fellow adventurers, were liable to desert him if his 
fortunes fell. 

Rurik himself was called to Novgorod as its first prince. 
This ancient city was built upon both banks of the 
Volkow, a navigable stream communicating with the 
great lakes and with the rivers of the North. It became 
at an early day a commercial centre, and was the largest 
and wealthiest city of Russia, containing at times a 
population of more than a hundred thousand souls. 
The whole body of the citizens was convoked at the 
sound of the great bell, and met in the court of laroslaf ; 
any citizen, the very humblest, could call them together. 
The vetche could annul the decree of the prince, or dis- 
miss his officers. The meanest citizen might prefer a 



94 Slav or Saxon. 

charge against him. It not infrequently occurred that 
princes were discharged and recalled several times in suc- 
cession. The republic called itself " My Lord Novgorod 
the Great," and the people said: "Who can equal God 
and the Great Novgorod ? " The prince made an oath to 
depose no magistrate without trial, and to observe the 
laws and privileges of the city. He could not execute 
justice without the help of the posadnik, the local judge, 
nor take any suit beyond the jurisdiction of Novgorod. 
The determinations of the vetche, like those of the mir, 
were made, not by the majority, but by the unanimity of 
voices. 

This principle seems to be inherent in the Slav peo- 
ples. In Poland it required the unanimous choice of 
the nobles to elect a king. The opposition of a single 
voice could defeat the most important measures. This 
led to anarchy and to the overthrow of the Polish king- 
dom. In ancient Novgorod, too, great trouble came from 
this strange custom. Rival assemblies organized and 
fought out their battles on the bridge ; a minority which 
would not yield was sometimes drowned in the Volkow. 
When Novgorod established colonies, each had its own 
vetche for the management of its local aflairs, but it was 
subject to the decrees of the vetche of Novgorod. When 
the public assembly of the parent city was to be con- 
voked upon matters affecting one of the colonies, the 
colony was notified and invited to attend, but there was 
no representative government ; those who came simply 
formed a part of the vetche of Novgorod. Such a crude 
form of government could not last. When the interest of 



The History of Russia. 95 

the colony and the parent state conflicted, the colony 
would declare its independence. Perhaps Novgorod 
would accede to this ; generally there was a war, but the 
colonies were distant and their subjugation was difficult. 
So it came to pass that as the colonies multiplied the 
process of disintegration kept going on. Pskov was 
originally a Novgorodian colony which became inde- 
pendent at an early day. Viatka was another. 

When Rurik was called to Novgorod, other Variag 
princes, though not of the same family, were called to 
Kiev, a city on the Dnieper communicating directly with 
the Black Sea. From thence they made an expedition 
against Byzantium, the first of a series of similar incur- 
sions, through which Greek civilization was brought into 
Russia. The expedition was unsuccessful. Oleg, the 
brother of Rurik, conquered Kiev, and he too sailed 
against Byzantium, and received contributions from the 
Emperor as the price of peace. His successor, Igor, in 
a third expedition ravaged the Greek provinces. Vladi- 
mir, searching for the best religion, adopted that of the 
Greek church and forced baptism upon his unwilling 
subjects. Vladimir divided the cities of Russia among 
his heirs, but one of them, laroslaf the Great, subdued the 
others and assumed supreme control. His code of laws 
is still extant. It resembles the contemporary laws of 
other European nations ; it permits private revenge and 
blood atonement, provides for trial by jury, by ordeal, and 
by compurgation. Torture and capital punishment were 
unknown. laroslaf held correspondence with European 
states. Inter-marriages were made between the House of 



9^ Slav or Saxojt. 

Rurik and other royal families. Russia of the eleventh 
century was a European state ; it afterwards became 
Asiatic. laroslaf made of Kiev a great capital, containing 
four hundred churches and many schools. He was a 
Russian Charlemagne. He divided his principality into 
fiiefs among his relatives and companions, but these grants 
were always temporary and revocable at his will. 

The Variagi were called into Russia for the purpose of 
putting an end to the ceaseless strife of town against 
town. The continual partition of territory among the 
princes of the House of Rurik, their turmoils and dissen- 
sions after the death of laroslaf the Great, brought about 
calamities almost as great as the anarchy of the original 
Slavs. The only unity was that of race, language, religion, 
and historical development. The eldest of the house was 
nominally head, but had little power over the others. 
Gradually the tide of Russian emigration flowed East, the 
princes of Suzdal acquired power and attacked Novgorod. 
That great city became for a time subject to a prince 
of Suzdal named Andrei, an unflinching tyrant, and upon 
his assassination disorders followed everywhere. There 
was pressing need of greater national unity. 

Suddenly, from the solitudes of the East, there came a 
strange and unknown power, which was to accomplish 
this work. In frightful suffering and bloodshed were laid 
the foundations of a gloomy despotism. In Eastern Asia, 
at the foot of the Altai mountains, lived the wild race of 
Tartars. Under Genghis Khan, the tribes of this nomadic 
people were united. China was laid waste. All in their 
way became a prey to these savages, who knew no 



The History of Russia. 97 

distinction of age or sex. Soon these herds of innumera- 
ble horsemen swept Westward under Batui, the lieutenant 
of the Khan. They invaded the plains of Russia and 
defeated the army of Kiev at the great battle of Kalka. 
Then they vanished as suddenly as they had come. New 
conquests called them elsewhere. In a few years they 
returned. There was no union anywhere to resist them. 
Such was the discord among the princes, that one faction 
would invoke their aid for the destruction of another. 
Everywhere they went, they demanded the tribute of a 
tenth as the condition of peace. Terrible accounts are 
given of the appearance of this savage people. The whole 
race was an army and marched together. Their wild 
visages, their screams, the neighing of the horses, the 
bellowings of the cattle, struck terror at their approach. 
One after another, the cities of Russia fell before them 
until nothing was left but Novgorod and a small tract in 
the Northwest. Alexander Nevski reigned in that city. 
He is one of the few heroes of history whose patriotic 
efforts gleam brightly through the gloom of a falling 
cause. His bravery and intelligence were shown in his 
successful wars against the Livonians, Swedes, and Finns, 
but when this countless swarm of barbarians appeared, he 
saw that resistance was ruin and he advised submission. 
The whole of Russia bowed under the Mongol yoke. 

The Tartars did not introduce any fundamental political 
changes. They collected the tribute of a tenth, and the 
Russian princes were forced to visit the Horde in token of 
submission. The Tartars built the city of Sarai on the 
lower Volga. Thither the princes went, and the lieuten- 



98 Slav or Saxon. 

ant of the Khan judged their disputes. Often they were 
required to repair to the tents of the Great Khan himself, 
at the Eastern extremity of Asia, across pitiless des- 
erts, where their nobles and they themselves perished 
from thirst, and their dry bones whitened the steppes. 
The Russians were compelled to furnish troops who served 
the Khan in his wars and who shared with his own sol- 
diers the booty of his conquests. No prince could ascend 
the throne or make war without the authority of the Khan. 
There were inter-marriages between the Tartars and the 
princes and nobles of Russia, but this amalgamation did 
not extend to the lower strata of society. The peasants, 
who preserved their purer blood and faith, became distinct- 
ively known as Krestianin or Christians. Gradually the 
Tartars became more civilized. A sort of rude chivalry 
began to prevail among them, while the Russians, de- 
based by their thraldom, vied with each other at the 
court of the Khan in servility and intrigue. Each prince 
sought to excite the Tartars against his brothers, in order 
to acquire their possessions. Their sycophancy reached 
the lowest depths. Gradually the principalities of Eastern 
Russia grouped themselves around Moscow. A race of 
princes, stern, crafty and pitiless, servile to the Khan, 
arrogant to their subjects, assumed the title of Grand 
Princes of Moscow, and laid the foundation of the present 
autocracy. They became collectors of the Khan's tribute. 
The Tartar knew no pity in his exactions and they knew 
none. They ruled with merciless severity. The great 
historian of Russia, Karamsin, says : " The princes of 
Moscow took the humble title of servants of the Khans, 



The History of Russia. 99 

and it was by this means that they became powerful 
monarchs." Rambaud says : " It was the crushing weight 
of Tartar domination that stifled the germs of political 
liberty." The Eastern type of government has always 
been the absolute type, and both from Asia and from 
Byzantium came the infusion of absolutism into the gov- 
ernment of Russia. The Mongol yoke did not interfere 
with the growth of the Greek church. This church has 
been the constant ally of despotism. It planted autocratic 
ideas into Russia at an early day. The arbitrary codes of 
the Greek emperors, Basil and Justinian, introduced with 
the new faith, were established side by side with the free 
code of laroslaf, and the liberty-loving Slavs became 
accustomed to ideas of autocracy, imprisonment, forced 
labor, flogging, torture, and the death penalty. The 
Tartars indeed granted special favors to the Greek church 
and exempted its priests from taxation. Convents multi- 
plied, superstition increased, while scholars and learning 
disappeared. 

One cannot read without sickening, the stories of the 
murders, the tortures, the massacres, the intrigues, the 
slavish subserviency, and the cowardly assassinations 
that mark the growth of the Grand Principality of Mos- 
cow. Women and children are impaled alive, men are 
burned in iron cages, excruciating tortures are prescribed 
by law, mutilation of face and limb are the most ordinary 
kinds of punishment. Neither ties of friendship nor of 
kinship are any protection. The murder of Mikhail by 
luri is avenged before the eyes of the Khan himself by 
the son of the murdered man, Dmitri of the Terrible 



LofC. 



100 Slav or Saxon. 

Eyes. It was in the blood of many martyrs that the Holy 
Empire of Russia came to its growth. Great strides are 
made toward consolidation of power. When a prince 
dies, his property is no longer divided among his sons 
or brothers, but the paramount authority is given to 
one alone. Gradually the power of the Tartars becomes 
weakened by wars among themselves, while Russia grows 
stronger by the union of all authority in the hands of a 
single prince. Finally the Russians attempt to throw off 
the yoke of the Khan. Their prince defeats the Tartars 
in a great battle. Then Tamerlane, the conqueror of 
India, becomes Khan, the tide of victory ebbs, and Moscow 
is sacked by his lieutenant. But the Muscovites soon re- 
cover from the disaster. The principality grows in power, 
and the Grand Prince of Moscow becomes the ruler of 
Novgorod also. Tartar suzerainty is again established, 
and the Russian princes rival each other in baseness. The 
Khan confirms the right of a usurper against the lawful 
prince, because, bowed in the dust, he claimed " no other 
title to the principality but the will of the Khan himself." 

At this time Byzantium fell before the conquering Turks ; 
there was no longer a great Czar in the East. The Princes 
of Moscow were soon to shake off the Tartar yoke, and 
to assume the title. 

The re-conquest of Russia from the nomads of the 
South had begun. The Tartars of the steppe conquered, 
but could not assimilate the Russians of the forest. A 
temporary suzerainty was all that they could maintain 
over a people whose agricultural pursuits and modes of 
life were so different from their own. The re-conquest 



The History of Russia. 10 1 

was a task more thoroughly done. The Russian, in his 
turn, overcame and then assimilated. He threw off the 
yoke of the khans, and then, emerging from his forests 
of the North, to which he had been driven, he not only 
regained the ground he had lost, but spread the network 
of permanent colonization far to the South and East of his 
former boundaries, absorbing into the mass of the Russian 
people whatever of the Tartar element remained. 

The Tartar population in a few cities, such as Kazan 
and Astrakhan, with small and scattered Tartar com- 
munities, distributed here and there like little islets in the 
great ocean of Russian civilization, are the only inde- 
pendent relics which to-day remain to attest the suprem- 
acy of these wild nomads five centuries ago. The infusion 
of Tartar blood into that of the Russian people has not 
been great, but the Tartar domination has left a lasting 
impress upon Russian character. It is to them that we 
must ultimately trace the habits of servitude and baseness, 
the notions of autocracy, and the craft, the dishonesty, and 
dissimulation, which have left their mark upon the charac- 
ter of the Russian people. 

The consolidation of national power is generally accom- 
plished under the leadership of some great man ; that of 
Russia was brought about through the able and crafty 
policy of Ivan the Great. His reign took place during 
an age when, throughout all Europe, the disintegrated 
forces of feudalism were supplanted by the concentrated 
power of monarchy. It was the time when Ferdinand 
and Isabella had consolidated under a single throne the 
petty governments of Spain. It was the period when the 



I02 Slav or Saxon. 

Tudors of England had put an end to the interminable 
Wars of the Roses, and had asserted an authority para- 
mount to that of the nobles or the parliament of the 
people. It was the age when Louis XL, by his genius 
and merciless craft, had stamped out the power of feudal- 
ism and given to France a strong but absolute govern- 
ment. Ivan the Great closely resembled the latter 
monarch. He was the most devout of sovereigns ; his 
hypocrisy knew no bounds. While he cut off the noses 
and lips of his prisoners, while he mutilated by horrible 
tortures the highest of his nobility, while he assassinated 
his own kindred for the purpose of appropriating the 
principalities which belonged to them, he kept with the 
utmost punctiliousness all the observances of the Church, 
and prayed and wept with unction for his victims. He 
stirred up dissensions in Novgorod which led to its final 
subjection. The vetche was wholly overthrown, and the 
great bell which called the people together was taken 
away. In his wars with Lithuania, Western Russia, 
which had melted away before the time of the Tartars, 
was partly reconquered. Ivan married Sophia Paleologus, 
the last descendant of the Greek emperors. Greek immi- 
grants flocked to Moscow, bringing with them Greek let- 
ters, Greek arts, and Greek subserviency to despotism. 
Ivan was a law-maker, too, and the code of the Ulogenia 
increasing corporal punishment, the death penalty, and 
torture, was established during his reign. 

It was said that this great tyrant was personally a coward ; 
that his victories were won by his generals while he re- 
mained immured in his palace. The Tartars, torn with 



The History of Russia, 103 

internal dissensions, troubled him but little. Under his 
reign their yoke was shaken off, but the Tartar domina- 
tion was no more grinding than the despotism which he 
established. "To a Russian who said that autocracy had 
lifted Russia, when crushed by the Tartars, a foreigner 
answered that it had been lifted only upon its knees." 
By the Muscovite forms of servility the proudest boyars 
declared themselves slaves of the Czar. The most debasing 
ceremonial, descending from class to class, down to the 
lowest, was ennobled by the commands of religion. And 
yet, without the tyranny established by the Grand Princes 
of Moscow, Russia would never have been the great em- 
pire it is. In this period, which Solovief calls the pro- 
longation of the liquid state, no other form of govern- 
mental organism could have created a stable empire upon 
these boundless plains. Solovief says that " the excessive 
energy of the government was a natural consequence of 
the weakness and incomplete development of the social 
body." 

Vasili, grandson of Ivan the Great, suppressed the liber- 
ties of the last of the free cities, Pskov, whose weeping 
citizens were deprived of their vetche and their bell. 
The nobles of the city were banished, and their places 
were filled by three hundred Muscovite families sent to 
Pskov for that purpose. The annalist cries : " An eagle, 
a many-winged eagle, with claws like a lion, has swept 
down upon me ; he has taken captive the three cedars of 
Lebanon, my beauty, my riches, my children. Our land 
is a desert, our city ruined, our commerce destroyed. 



104 Slav or Saxon. 

My brothers have been carried away to a place where our 
fathers never dwelt." 

All the appanages, or portions carved out for younger 
sons by the princes, were now destroyed; all power was 
united in one prince. The prince's jester rode through 
the streets of Moscow with a broom, crying out that it 
was time to clean the empire of what remained of this 
rubbish. 

Then came Ivan the Terrible. In his time, the strug- 
gle was not against the neighboring princes, but against 
the oligarchy of the boyars. During his childhood, this 
ambitious nobility had assumed full control. Ivan was 
a boy who said little but thought a great deal. At 
last he summoned his boyars and reproached them for 
their evil government. "There were among them," he 
said, "many guilty ones, but this time he would content 
himself with making one example." He ordered his 
guards to seize Shuiski, the chief of the nobles, and then 
and there had him torn to pieces by hounds. Others 
were banished. The prince who did this was thirteen 
years of age. A period of internal peace and external 
conquest follows. First Kazan, then Astrakhan, strong- 
holds of the Tartars on the Volga, fall before him. Later 
the intrigues of the nobles are renewed. Ivan falls dan- 
gerously ill, the boyars refuse allegiance to his son, and a 
mutiny breaks out in the palace. He knows the fate in store 
for his wife and children if he should die, but he recovers. 
His wife is poisoned ; Kurbski, one of the most trusted 
of his nobles, deserts to the king of Poland ; other plots 



The History of Russia. 105 

are discovered. All the passions of his malignant nature 
become aroused. Then follow the seven periods of mas- 
sacre ; a reign of terror hangs over the nobles. Ivan 
writes to the monastery of St. Cyril, asking the prayers of 
the Church for his victims. The list shows thirty-five 
hundred ; many of the names are followed by the gloomy 
addition, "with his wife and children," "with his sons," 
" with ten men who came to his help." Ivan slew his 
own child in an altercation. When the spirit of liberty 
revived in Novgorod, the revolt of that great city was 
punished by the physical extermination of its inhabit- 
ants. For five weeks the work of slaughter went on 
within its walls, and sixty thousand is the tale of men 
butchered by his merciless soldiery. Yet Russia grew 
in power under his government. In his reign, an army 
went across the Urals under a brigand chief, and con- 
quered much of Siberia, " the great realm that slopes to 
the Arctic, that sluggish mere and motionless, where you 
hear the sound of the sun rising." Although Ivan was 
willing to use the Church as an instrument of his despot- 
ism, he was statesman enough to perceive that there was 
a menace in the great power of the monasteries, so he for- 
bade them to acquire new lands. His latter years were 
clouded by military disasters in the West, and by the fail- 
ure of his intrigues for the Polish crown. 

Such was the fear of assassination at this time, that it 
was the custom for the relatives of the Czar's wife, and 
not his own, to take control of the affairs of state. 
Since they would be the greatest losers by his death, their 
efforts were directed towards the perpetuation of his life 



lo6 Slav or Saxon. 

and power. The penal code was savage. The insolvent 
debtor was tied up half-naked in a public place, beaten 
three hours a day for forty days, and then sold into slav- 
ery. Men were broken on the wheel, impaled, drowned 
under the ice, knouted to death, buried alive up to the 
neck, torn to pieces by iron hooks. The noble killed his 
slave and suffered no penalty. Foreigners were secluded 
and rigidly watched. Even ambassadors were not allowed 
to hold converse with the people, lest Russian manners 
should be contaminated by the outside world. No citi- 
zen could quit the town in which he lived. The very 
peasants hid their property to escape taxation. Women 
dwelt in Oriental seclusion ; they were always minors in 
the eye of the law. They might be beaten by their hus- 
bands at will. Cards and dancing were forbidden, but 
drunkenness was universal. Bear-fights and the jests of 
buffoons were the diversions of the people. Medical 
science was unknown ; medicine and sorcery were synony- 
mous. If the doctor did not cure, he was punished as a ma- 
gician. Society sank to the lowest depths to which thral- 
dom can degrade it. Yet Ivan himself was not wholly a 
barbarian. He was a man of no mean literary ability. He 
encouraged printing and letters; but among such a people 
these could make little headway. 

The successor of Ivan, his son Feodor, was utterly un- 
like his father. He was a good man, but a vacillating 
and imbecile ruler, and the power passed to Boris Go- 
dunof, a powerful noble, who ruled with vigor in the 
Czar's name. Boris prohibited the serfs from changing 
their masters, and thus bound them to the soil. He insti- 



The History of Russia. 107 

tuted the patriarchate, in order to have a strong ecclesi- 
astical support for his own claims to the throne when Feo- 
dor should die. Dmitri, another son of Ivan the Terrible 
and heir to the throne, is slain, presumably by the secret 
order of Boris, though others were punished for it. Feodor 
dies ; the dynasty is now extinct. The patriarch supports 
the claims of Boris to the throne, and a sort of States- 
General is convened, which elects him. Suddenly a man 
appears claiming to be the murdered Dmitri. He invades 
Russia at the head of a little army of Poles and Cossacks. 
After several battles fought with varying success, the 
nobles, weary of the tyranny of Boris, desert to the 
standard of the usurper. Boris dies, and Dmitri enters 
Moscow and assumes the government. The widow of 
Ivan the Terrible recognizes the usurper as her son, and 
during his short reign of less than a year he displays many 
high qualities. But, upon his marriage with a Polish 
princess, a Catholic, the religious and national prejudices 
of the Russians are aroused and he falls a victim to a 
conspiracy among the nobles, headed by Vasili Shuiski, 
who succeeds to the throne upon his death. Then an- 
other Dmitri appears, a man low-born, brutal, and igno- 
rant, and while these two contend for the sovereignty of 
the empire, Sigismund of Poland enters Russia at the 
head of an army, and his son Vladislas becomes Czar. 
The wildest confusion prevails between contending fac- 
tions, until another States-General settles the succession 
upon Michael Romanoff, the first of the present reigning 
house. The power of autocracy is now permanently es- 
tablished. 



io8 Slav or Saxon. 

Farther South, on the untilled steppes, and forming a 
military barrier between Muscovy and the hordes of plun- 
dering and slave-dealing Turks and Crimean Tartars, lived 
the Cossack tribes in a sort of wild liberty, begotten by 
their nomadic life. Some of these dwelt in the Ukraine, 
the most fertile and beautiful of the plains of Russia, 
whose deep black soil had not yet been invaded by the 
implements of systematic agriculture, since a pastoral 
people will not resort to the hard life of the farmer 
while there is land enough to support them and their 
flocks in comfort in their nomad state. These Cossacks 
formed little military republics, protecting themselves as 
best they might from the marauding Moslems in the 
South, whose territories they often invaded, bringing 
back with their plunder the wives of the Tartars, whose 
blood became thus intermingled with their own. In 
their social institutions the most absolute equality pre- 
vailed. In their often-recurring elections the humblest 
might become chief of the tribe or the nation. " Be still, 
Cossack, thou mayest sometime be hetman," was the 
answer to many a complaint. The Cossacks of the Ukraine 
had hitherto preserved this freedom under Polish suzer- 
ainty; a half-barbarous tribe farther South, the Zapo- 
roshtsui, enjoyed still greater liberty, but under Alexis, 
the successor of Michael, they both became subject to the 
Czar, who granted them, for a while, a sort of semi- 
independence. But the Czar's power is too strong; the 
Cossacks resist ; they are overthrown, and their liberty is 
taken away. 

We have thus followed the gradual withdrawal of free- 



The History of Russia. 109 

dom from the communities of the early Slavs, until we find 
the race subject to the sternest and most relentless despot- 
ism on earth. 

Autocracy, now firmly established, is following the path 
which despotism is almost sure to take at one time or an- 
other. Russia is becoming fossilized. The influence of the 
Church, which has done so much to consolidate the power 
of the Czar, is opposed to all innovation. The minutest 
habits of social life are regulated by the joint authority of 
a Church and a State which regards every breach of its com- 
mands as a matter both of sacrilege and treason. Sunk in 
semi-barbarism, isolated from the rest of Europe, the Rus- 
sians refuse all instruction, oppose all civilization, and be- 
lieve their way the only true way, their ideals the only 
true ideals. He who proposes an innovation is not only 
a traitor to the Czar, but a rebel to the commands of the 
Most High. 

Suddenly there sprang upon the scene of action a 
colossal figure — one of the few men able to break the 
thraldom which custom and superstition impose, to 
overcome the prejudices of his time; to gather for himself 
the stores of modern civilization, and to scatter them 
among his people. It was an extraordinary circumstance 
that such a man, by the accident of birth, held in his sin- 
gle hand the destiny of the whole Russian State. With- 
out him, the reforms with which he filled a lifetime would 
have required centuries for their accomplishment. He 
was one of the few great men of history to whom the 
power was given to turn with his single arm the whole 
current of a nation's life. He tore Russia by main force 



I lo . Slav or Saxon. 

from her ancient moorings, and sent her forward upon 
the swift stream of modern civilization. Peter the Great 
was born a barbarian ; he passed much of his turbu- 
lent youth upon the streets of Moscow, associating with 
everybody, acquiring knowledge from every source. To 
his last day he preserved the eager curiosity of childhood, 
an unquenchable thirst for information, violent passions, 
but an earnest purpose, never to be shaken, of making 
Russia a great state and the Russian people a great and 
civilized people. Throwing aside all pomp and pageantry, 
he went everywhere incognito. He was disguised as a 
subordinate in the embassy which he sent to visit the 
nations of Europe. He learned navigation from a skipper 
on the White Sea, and ship-building in the garb of a work- 
man at Saardam and Amsterdam. Russia should know 
these things ; nobody else could teach her, so he must 
learn himself. Yet he was as great an autocrat as any of 
his predecessors. He crushed out liberty as relentlessly 
as Ivan the Great. 

His great aim was to make Russia one of the great civi- 
lized states of Europe. To do this, the country must have 
an outlet on the sea. It must have some commerce with 
the outside world, he must own the Baltic provinces, and 
to get these he must fight with Sweden. But the Swedes 
are civilized, they know the modern methods of warfare, 
the Russians do not. In the first encounter, the Russians 
are shamefully defeated, but they can wait. Peter must 
learn from his enemies. At last he is able to beat them 
when fighting two to one. This is a great gain. Charles 
XII. of Sweden, is a man who would play the role of 



The History of Russia. 1 1 1 

Alexander, but Peter says, " he will find me no Darius." 
Charles invades Russia, Peter offers terms, but the Swedish 
king will treat only at Moscow, The Russians retire be 
fore him and draw him into the midst of their forests and 
plains in the depths of a Russian winter. Hunger and 
cold destroy half the army of Sweden before it encoun- 
ters the Russians. Then comes Poltava, and the army of 
Charles is annihilated. The star of Sweden wanes, and 
Russia, with its larger resources and greater power of ex- 
pansion, takes the rank which its rival held. So Peter ac- 
quires his outlet on the Baltic. 

It is impossible for us to imagine the difficulties which 
the Czar had to overcome in forcing his reforms upon 
Russia. His efforts to make the nobles shave their beards 
provoked more animosity than all the massacres of Ivan 
the Terrible. The old Russian proverb is " Novelty brings 
calamity " ; reform had to be enforced by the knout, by 
banishment, by death itself. He pushed his reforms in- 
discriminately in every direction. In all things except 
its absolute form of government, Russia must become 
like its neighbors. 

The Church had accomplished what it could in welding 
the despotism, it now stood in the way of reform. It was 
conservative of old customs, hence he limited its authority. 
The patriarchate was abolished. Peter's despotism was 
to be military, not monastic, his autocracy was of the kind 
that crushed equally the boyar and the priest. Every 
noble was required to serve the State for life. To enable 
him to perform this duty, his power over his serfs must 
be maintained and increased. Russia was to be a State 



112 Slav or Saxon. 

centralized and civilized like the France of Louis the 
Fourteenth, yet the patriarchal and Asiatic principle 
which presided over the relations of the father with his 
children, of the Czar with his subjects, of the proprietor 
with his serfs, was to remain unimpaired. On the basis 
of a social organization which seemed to date from the 
eleventh century were to be constructed a system of 
diplomacy, a regular army, a complete order of adminis- 
trative ofificers, together with schools and academies, and 
the trade and manufactures of a luxurious civilization. 

The reforms which Peter introduced have lasted down 
to the present time, in spite of the repugnance of the 
people, and the imbecility and vices of many of his 
successors. But the rough haste with which he forced 
them upon Russia did great harm. He took no note of 
moral laws ; he weakened the conscience of his people by 
violating it. By copying every thing from other sources, 
he gave no play to Russian originality. Had he paid 
some heed to the law of natural selection, his reforms 
might indeed have come slower, but he would have planted 
in Russia only such things as were capable of growth on 
Russian soil. As it was, he brought into Russia institu- 
tions which were not in accord with the spirit of the peo- 
ple, and which, like borrowed garments, would not fit. 
So long as serfdom, with its primitive and patriarchal 
customs, continued to exist, civilized institutions, affect- 
ing only the upper strata of Russian society, were gro- 
tesquely inharmonious. This dualism of Russian civiliza- 
tion is to-day repeated in Russian character. The most 
opposite extremes are found together. 



The History of Russia. 1 1 3 

To a large extent, the old nobility was supplanted by 
the so-called nobility of merit, the nobility of ofifice- 
holders, the various gradations of the Tchin, established 
by Peter, where appointments and promotion depended 
upon service to the State. Peter decreed that land should 
go to the oldest by birth. The seclusion of women 
was abolished, for this was opposed to the civilization of 
Europe, and was not necessary to the support of his 
power. Women were no longer compelled to marry 
against their will. The corruptions of office-holders had 
been frightful. Men solicited offices of the Czar that they 
"might feed themselves " by plundering the people ; these 
things were mercilessly punished. A State Inquisition 
was established for " crimes against the majesty of the 
Czar." Peter's method of enforcing his reforms strikes us 
with wonder at its barbarous simplicity. All towns must 
send shoemakers to learn the trade at Moscow ; beards 
were taxed ; no Russian must become a monk until thirty 
years of age, lest population be diminished. He deter- 
mined to establish a new capital by the sea ; he would tear 
the Russians away from their old associations around 
Moscow. St. Petersburg was built by edicts ; he decreed 
that there should be no stone house erected except at the 
new capital ; all stone-masons flocked thither at once. 
Every owner of five hundred peasants must build a house 
in that city. The capital of Russia remains a durable 
monument to his energy. His motto contained . the 
secret, not only of his own greatness, but of the continued 
greatness of the Russian State, " Vires acquirit eundoT 
The continued movement of Russian society has pre- 



1 14 Slav or Saxon. 

served it from the crystallization into which it was falling 
when he took the helm. 

Peter the Great was, perhaps, more than any other 
sovereign in history, a type of the people whom he ruled. 
In the words of Leroy-Beaulieu : 

This union, in a single person, of so many qualities and 
defects, of so many traits scattered through a nation, formed 
a man, wild, strange, almost a monster, but at the same time 
one of the most vigorous and enterprising men, one of the best 
endowed for life and action which the world has ever seen. 
Few nations have the good-fortune of thus having a great man, 
in whom they can themselves be personified, who, even in his 
vices, seems a colossal incarnation of their genius. Peter, the 
pupil and imitator of foreigners ; Peter, who seemed to have 
made it his mission to do violence to the nature of his people, 
and who was looked upon by the old Muscovites as a sort of 
Anti-Christ, is the type of the Russian, the Great-Russian in 
particular. With him it can be said that the sovereign and 
the nation explain each other. A people who are like such a 
man are sure of a great future ; if they seem to lack some of 
the highest and finest qualities which adorn humanity, they 
possess those which confer power and political greatness. 

Under the reign of Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter, 
while religious persecution increased, the death penalty 
was abolished, but a hundred blows of the knout (which 
the victim rarely survived) followed by lifelong exile to 
Siberia, with nose and ears cut off, was an indifferent 
substitute. Eighty thousand prisoners were knouted and 
banished during her reign. 



The History of Russia. 115 

Foremost among the successors of Peter was Catharine 
the Second. Her skilful intrigues in Poland, her defeat 
of the Turks, her conquests in the South, and the exten- 
sion of the territory of Russia in every direction under 
her administration, present a brilliant chapter in Russian 
history. But it is with her internal policy that we are 
most concerned. At the beginning of her reign her ideas 
were extremely liberal ; she established a commission to 
compile a new code, and gave to the commissioners in- 
structions as to the principles which should govern them, 
taken from the brightest pages of the philosophy of the 
1 8th century. It contained such maxims as the follow- 
ing : "The nation is not made for the sovereign, but the 
sovereign for the nation." " Equality consists in the 
obedience of the citizen to the law alone ; liberty is the 
right to do every thing that is not forbidden by law." " It 
is better to spare ten guilty men than to put one innocent 
man to death." " Torture is an admirable means for con- 
victing an innocent but weakly man, and for saving a 
stout fellow even when he is guilty." 

She talked of the emancipation of the serfs ; she estab- 
lished a society which proposed the question of emanci- 
pation as a subject for prize competition. An article fa- 
voring it won the prize. But Catharine did nothing more. 
Indeed, she finally aggravated serfdom by dividing many 
of her own serfs among the nobles. She forbade peasants 
to complain of their masters. A master might send his 
serf to Siberia at will. She allowed no courts for deter- 
mining the rights of serfs belonging to nobles. She fol- 
lowed the policy of Peter in limiting the power of the 



1 16 Slav or Saxon. 

Church ; she protected religious refugees from other coun- 
tries ; she appropriated a vast part of the domains of the 
monasteries ; she granted rehgious toleration. It would 
appear from her correspondence with Voltaire that she 
was personally a skeptic. She introduced a number of 
superficial reforms among the upper classes ; she took 
measures for the instruction of women, encouraged edu- 
cation, and established a hospital for foundlings at Mos- 
cow ; but her reforms went no deeper than the upper 
classes of Russian social life ; the serfs were more abased 
than ever. When the French Revolution shook the 
thrones of Europe, a great change took place in Catharine's 
ideas. She had the bust of her old friend, Voltaire, re- 
moved to the rubbish-room. Russians suspected of lib- 
eral ideas were closely watched ; the author of a book on 
serfdom, containing views similar to those which she had 
held herself, was sent to Siberia. Several public journals 
were suppressed ; she broke off all communication with 
France, forbade the tricolor to enter Russian ports, and 
expelled French subjects who would not swear fidelity to 
monarchy. Despotism received new strength at the 
hands of this brilliant but unprincipled woman. 

Her son Paul, brought up by Catharine in seclusion from 
motives of jealousy, was a tyrant by nature. Under his 
reign the censorship of the press became more rigorous. 
Foreign travel was forbidden. 

Paul was succeeded by Alexander, whose international 
policy, disastrous at first, ended in the overthrow of Na- 
poleon, and made him the chief among the allied mon- 
archs of Europe. An advent of liberalism came in with 



The History of Russia. Wj 

his reign, the censorship was mitigated, and travel encour- 
aged. Even a constitution was talked of ; the emanci- 
pation of the serfs was projected ; contracts of manu- 
mission were made valid ; dissenters were tolerated ; 
public education was organized. Under the advice of 
Speranski, elaborate schemes were prepared for the 
reform of the State ; but at last those interested in 
the support of existing institutions became leagued 
against him, and Speranski was overthrown. He was suc- 
ceeded by the reactionary Araktcheef . Then Alexander's 
own character seemed to change ; he became more and 
more conservative. The press was again subjected to 
the strictest censure. We find that even the works of 
Grotius on International Law, as well as the theories of 
Copernicus, were interdicted. The Czar grew gloomy 
and suspicious, and considered himself the dupe of his 
own sentiments. The system of military colonies, which 
has since been used with such wonderful effect, was 
commenced under the reign of Alexander. The Holy 
Alliance, which he instituted, became an alliance of sov- 
ereigns against liberty. 

The revolt which took place when Nicholas mounted 
the throne, planned as it was by a revolutionary society 
which aimed at the destruction of the ruling house, 
strengthened him in his autocratic and conservative ten- 
dencies. It is characteristic of Russian ignorance of all 
notions of freedom, that when the cry of " Long live the 
Constitution ! " was raised, the soldiers believed that the 
word " Constitution " referred to the wife of the Grand 
Duke, Constantine, whom they thought lawfully entitled 



1 1 8 Slav or Saxon. 

to the throne. Pastel, the leading spirit of this unripe 
movement for liberty, said : " I tried to gather the har- 
vest without sowing the seed." Nicholas was the incarna- 
tion of despotism. His tyranny cut Russia off from com- 
munication with Western Europe. The severity of the 
censorship under his reign, the restrictions upon travel and 
education, and the inquisitorial methods of his police can 
hardly be believed by those accustomed to liberty. The 
most stringent regulations were made concerning tutors 
and governesses ; their morality, including their political 
opinions, must be certified to by one of the universities. 
It was forbidden to send young men to study in Western 
colleges, and every obstacle was thrown in the way of for- 
eign travel and residence. Philosophy could not be taught 
in the universities. This branch of knowledge was put 
under the control of ignorant ecclesiastics. It is easy to 
imagine how it flourished under such care. The press 
became the instrument of reaction. A newspaper which 
advocated the ideas of Adam Smith was regarded as dan- 
gerous, and suppressed. The daily journals themselves 
began to wage war against liberty of thought and all for- 
eign innovations. It is melancholy to contemplate the 
misfortunes which Russia suffered under the stern rule of 
Nicholas. Listen to the description of Turgeneff: 

Looking about, you saw venality in full feather ; serfdom 
crushing the people down like a rock, barracks in every direc- 
tion ; there was no justice ; threats were made of closing the 
universities ; foreign travel was out of the question ; it was 
impossible to procure a serious book ; a gloomy cloud hung 
heavily over what was called the administration of literature 



The History of Russia. 119 

and the sciences ; informers were lurking everywhere ; among 
the young there was no common bond, no general interest ; 
fear and flattery were universal. 

Lermontoff, the ablest Russian writer of the period, 
was banished three times to the Caucasus. The French 
Revolution of 1850 excited the indignation of Nicholas. 
The Hungarian uprising against Austria was sternly sup- 
pressed by his armies. He was everywhere the champion 
of " the existing order." 

In 181 5, under Alexander I., a liberal constitution had 
been granted to Poland, but in the latter years of that 
monarch, a reactionary current set in. He forbade the 
public sittings of the Diet, the press was gagged, and the 
police vexed and annoyed the people. During the reign 
of Nicholas an insurrection breaks out among the Poles, 
to regain the liberties granted to them by the constitution 
of Alexander. But this constitution is incompatible with 
autocracy. Polish patriotism is no match for Russian 
bayonets. Warsaw is captured, " order reigns," the old 
constitution is obliterated, there is no Diet, no Polish 
army, every thing is administered by Russian authority. 
The Polish language is prohibited in the schools, the uni- 
versities are suppressed, five thousand Polish families are 
transported to the Caucasus, property worth over three 
hundred million francs is confiscated. In Lithuania the 
Roman Church is crushed and the bishops disciplined 
into such servility that they ask to be admitted to the 
Russian Church. The nuns who reject this union are 
banished to the forests of Siberia and subjected to 
unheard-of tortures. 



I20 Slav or Saxon. 

Then comes the Crimean War, brought about by the 
intrigues of Nicholas. Its issue was unsuccessful, and the 
people, who had submitted to tyranny without a mur- 
mur while the prestige of Russia was unimpaired, now 
began to complain. The most frightful corruption pre- 
vailed everywhere. Anonymous pamphlets came out, 
denouncing the tyranny which had brought on these dis- 
asters. Listen to the following : 

We have been kept long enough in serfage by the successors 
of the Tartar Khans. Arise and stand erect and calm before 
the throne of the despot ; demand of him a reckoning for the 
national misfortunes. Tell him boldly that his throne is not 
the altar of God, and that God has not condemned us forever 
to be his slaves. 

Russia, O Czar ! confided to thee the supreme power, and 
thou wert to her as a God upon earth. And what hast thou 
done ? Blinded by passion and ignorance, thou hast sought 
nothing but power ; thou hast forgotten Russia. Thou hast 
consumed thy life in reviewing troops, in altering uniforms, in 
signing the legislative projects of ignorant charlatans. Thou 
hast created a despicable race of censors of the press, that 
thou mightest sleep in peace and never know the wants, never 
hear the murmurs of thy people, never listen to the voice of 
truth. Truth ! Thou hast buried her ; thou hast rolled a 
great stone before the door of her sepulchre, thou hast placed 
a strong guard around her tomb, and in the exultation of 
thine heart thou hast said, " For her there is no resurrection ! " 
Now, on the third day. Truth has arisen ; she has come forth 
from among the dead. Advance, O Czar ! Appear at the 
bar of God and of history. Thou hast mercilessly trodden 
Truth under thy feet ; thou hast refused liberty ; at the same 



The History of Russia. 12 1 

time thou wast enslaved by thine own passions. By thy pride 
and obstinacy thou hast exhausted Russia, thou hast armed 
the world against her. Humiliate thyself before thy brothers. 
Bow thy haughty forehead in the dust, implore pardon, ask 
counsel. Throw thyself into the arms of thy people ; there is 
no other way of salvation for thee. 

The melancholy which overspread the entire life of 
Nicholas deepened under discouragement, and the flame 
of his life flickered out in gloom. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE REFORMS OF ALEXANDER II. 

Alexander II., on his accession to power, entertained 
the liberal ideas of Alexander I., and he was able to 
accomplish much more than his predecessor. Nicholas 
had limited the students in each university to three 
hundred. Alexander repealed the limitation. He re- 
duced the excessive fees for passports, and allowed new 
journals to be established ; the duties of individuals to the 
State were made less burdensome ; the condition of the 
Jews was bettered ; the children of soldiers and of sailors 
were restored to their parents. (What volumes of sugges- 
tion lie in this sentence ! ) The corruption during the 
Crimean War was such that Russian ofificials, who had 
been created into an order of nobility by Peter the Great, 
now fell into universal contempt. Alexander .II. did 
something to lessen this corruption by the creation of local 
assemblies, called zemstvos. 

These bodies have played quite an important part in 
Russian economy. Many sanguine friends of Russian in- 
stitutions saw in them the true ideal of government, — 
local self-rule by assemblies selected by the people, with 
the consolidating power of autocracy binding the whole 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 123 

together and dealing with all national and foreign affairs. 
The most sanguine hopes were entertained that these 
bodies would regenerate the entire Russian State, restore 
liberty, abolish corruption, educate the people, and make 
of Russia an earthly paradise. It has been the tendency 
of the Russians to expect great things from each new 
reform introduced by government, and the disappoint- 
ment is always keen and bitter when the performance 
does not come up to the prophecy. This was true of the 
zemstvos, of the Act of Emancipation, of the new tribunals 
and law reforms, and all the other liberal measures intro- 
duced at the beginning of tlie reign of Alexander. These 
local assemblies contain representatives from the two great 
classes of Russia, from the nobility (which, before emanci- 
pation, was the only land-owning class), and from the 
communes of the Russian peasantry, a class which con- 
stitutes three fourths of the entire population of Russia. 
The law provides that the preponderance in nearly all 
these assemblies shall remain with the nobles, but class 
spirit is not strong in Russia, and nobles and peasants sit 
side by side around the same table and conduct their busi- 
ness concerning education, sanitary measures, highways, 
fire protection, and other local matters in great harmony. 
The main trouble hitherto has been the lack of sufficient 
public interest to induce the representatives to attend. 
Their powers are extremely limited, they have not even 
the right to send a petition to the autocrat. This privi- 
lege is reserved to the assemblies of the nobles only. All 
matters of national politics are strictly forbidden. In one 
or two instances a demand for a constitution was met with 



1 24 Slav or Saxon. 

a stern reprimand, and the banishment of some of the 
leading spirits. A demand for the abolition of adminis- 
trative exile, by which men are transported for supposed 
political offences without trial, was equally unsuccessful. 
The annual session of twenty days is insufficient to transact 
important business. No power is afforded to these local 
assemblies for enforcing their own resolutions. The gover- 
nor of the province may, by his veto, delay for a year the ex- 
ecution of any of their measures. Meanwhile such measures 
are sent for examination to the central government at St. 
Petersburg, The financial resources of the zemsivos are 
utterly inadequate, yet with all these drawbacks, they 
have done much. Facilities for education were greatly in- 
creased during the first years of their activity. First in 
rank, in this respect, was the zemstvo of Viatka, v/here a 
majority of the members were peasants. The Russian 
tnoujik had shown an earnest desire for learning, and did 
all he could for the establishment of village schools, until 
the government interfered and took the matter out of his 
hands. Second among his cares was a desire for better sani- 
tary measures in a country where medical science had been 
hitherto unknown. Female physicians were employed for 
the village communities. These were the only ones accessi- 
ble within the narrow means of the semstvos. But here, 
too, the government crippled their efforts. Women doc- 
tors were considered dangerous instruments of revolu- 
tionary propaganda, and the government limited the 
number that might be employed. Savings banks, drain- 
age, and a system of mutual fire-insurance also occupied 
their attention. In a small way the zemstvos have done 



The Reforms of Alexander 11. 125 

much good, so much, indeed, that the government has 
been continually withdrawing the narrow powers which it 
formerly conceded to them. 

Another reform which marked the first years of the 
reign of Alexander, was the abolition of many of the re- 
strictions of the censorship. " Speech, that was long re- 
strained by police and censorial regulations, now flows 
smoothly, harmoniously, and majestically, like a mighty 
river that has just been freed from ice." Periodicals soon 
appeared with articles on trade and political economy. 
Even official corruption was discussed. 

But these new concessions granted to liberty were soon 
withdrawn. Alexander II. followed in the footsteps of 
Alexander I. ; he was liberal in the beginning, but reac- 
tionary and tyrannical in his later years. 

Another important reform, introduced at the beginning 
of his reign, was the establishment of the new tribunals. 
The procedure of the Russian courts had been secret, 
written, venal, and inquisitorial. The police had entire 
control of criminal matters. The fate of suitors com- 
monly depended upon the length of their purses. The 
judges, without exception, supplemented their meagre 
salaries with bribes. The most honest judge was he 
who took from both sides and decided as he thought 
right. A great change was made by Alexander. The 
proceedings became public, higher salaries were given, 
the profession of the bar came into life, and criminal 
causes were tried by jury. Still the right to banish for 
suspected crimes against the State was not affected, and 
later, Alexander recalled much that he had given. Politi- 



126 Slav or Saxon. 

cal trials are secret ; they are confided to the mihtary 
tribunals. Even the ordinary criminal judges receive, for 
the most part, provisional and probationary appointments. 
The condition of the courts and the perversions of justice 
in recent years will be described hereafter. 

But the great reform of Alexander was the abolition of 
serfdom. It is interesting to trace the history of this re- 
markable institution, and to consider its character as well 
as the character of the people upon whom it was imposed. 
The moujik, or peasant, is par excellence the typical 
Russian. At the time of the Tartar invasion, the 
peasants were the Krestianin, or Christians, who remained 
uncorrupted, free from the infusion of Tartar blood and 
Tartar infidelity. In the opinion of the Slavophils, the 
peasantry of Russia contains the great undeveloped 
potentiality of Russian growth. It is the " unhatched 
sgg " I the " unawakened Sphynx," which hides within 
its breast the undivulged secret of the future. Endowed 
with considerable natural intelligence, but wholly lacking 
even the most rudimentary instruction, the peasant 
is like the giant of the Russian legend " Ilya of Mur- 
oum," who has never been able to show his power and 
talent. Reduced to servitude, he has been bound to 
the soil and loaded with chains, and even when freed 
at last, he has no longer the use of his limbs nor the 
knowledge of his power. The causes of serfdom are not 
hard to find. It was not an Asiatic importation. It was 
an institution which grew up with the Grand Principality 
of Moscow. In the very early history of the Russians, as 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 127 

early as the time of laroslaf, or even before that, slaves 
were taken in battle and became the absolute property of 
their captors, but the origin of serfdom is not to be traced 
to this source. The serfs were originally the free cultiva- 
tors of the soil. With the growth of military power the 
peasant naturally sank in the social scale. The history of 
serfdom in Russia is the same as that of similar institu- 
tions in countries which are at the same time agricultural 
and military. While Russian unity was being cemented 
under the Princes of Moscow, the followers of the Prince, 
the nobles and the small landholders had to be equipped 
and properly supplied for war. The labor of the culti- 
vators of the soil was brought into use for this purpose, 
but there was no limitation confining the peasant to 
any particular tract or any particular master ; he might 
change masters every year upon St. George's Day; land 
had little value except that given it by the peasants 
who dwelt upon it. The larger the estate the more 
productive was cultivation, and the less severe were the 
exactions of the master. The result was that the 
peasants abandoned the lesser proprietors and entered 
the service of the wealthier nobles, and thus a large 
portion of the smaller land owners, who followed the 
Prince in his wars, were unable to equip and support 
themselves properly, and the military service suffered. 
To remedy this, Boris Godunof prohibited the peasants 
from changing their masters, and fixed them to the 
glebe ; he afterward modified this decree and per- 
mitted changes from one small land owner to another, 
but this liberty was again revoked at a later period. 



128 Slav or Saxon. 

Once fixed to the soil, the peasant soon lost all civil 
rights. 

When Peter the Great provided that every noble should 
remain in the service of the State during his entire life, 
a natural corollary of this arrangement was that he should 
be supported by the labor of his serfs, and we find that 
the power of the master, during Peter's reign, was con- 
firmed and strengthened. The State abandoned to the 
landed proprietor the civil administration and police 
power in his domains. The noble became the agent 
of the State for the government of his serfs. 

Peter III. freed the nobility from the obligation of life- 
long service to the State ; the logical sequence of this 
would have been to free the serfs from their correspond- 
ing obligations, but no such step was taken. In the 
reign of Catharine II., the power of the master was still fur- 
ther strengthened ; he could send his serfs to Siberia at 
will. From the reforms of subsequent reigns the serfs 
received no benefit. 

Serfdom was almost entirely confined to the dominions 
of the ancient Principality of Moscow. It prevailed to 
the greatest extent in the neighborhood of the ancient 
Russian capital. It did not exist in the extreme North, 
nor was it found among the Tartars, nor did it ever gain 
a firm foothold in Siberia. The peasantry were about 
equally divided into two great classes — crown peasants or 
serfs belonging to the State, and serfs belonging to indi- 
vidual proprietors. At the time of the emancipation 
there were about twenty-two millions of each class ; there 
was also a much smaller number of household servants 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 129 

and serfs belonging to the appanages. The serfs belong- 
ing to the crown enjoyed greater liberty than the other 
classes. During the entire continuance of this remark- 
able system, the little agricultural villages, composed 
of these serfs, retained their original Slavonic form of 
communal government ; they had their inir to settle their 
internal disputes, and they tilled in common the land 
which they held. 

This was also true with many of the serfs belonging to 
the nobles, but there was no general rule upon the sub- 
ject. Their condition depended largely upon the caprice 
of the masters. The peasants belonging to the large 
proprietors were generally the most fortunate. The great 
noble, Cheremetief, had among his serfs men who became 
millionnaires. There were two systems greatly in vogue 
for securing the labor of serfs. First, the Corvee, under 
which the master was entitled to the labor of the serfs 
three days in each week, the remainder of the time being 
given to the peasant to cultivate his own land for his own 
support. Second, the Obrok system, which was more 
favorable to the peasant. Under this he was permitted to 
enjoy his liberty and to follow whatever trade or occupa- 
tion he desired, upon condition of paying a certain annual 
sum to his proprietor. The household servants bore a 
much closer resemblance to our own slaves ; these were 
not attached to the soil, and were sold and treated in 
much the same manner as the negroes in the South. Up 
to the beginning of the present century there was a regu- 
lar class of slave-dealers, and advertisements of sales ap- 
peared in the public press and in handbills in the streets. 



130 Slav or Saxon. 

Wallace gives many instances : "In this house one can 
buy a coachman and a Dutch cow about to calve"; "To 
be sold — three coachmen, well trained and handsome, 
and three girls," etc. Alexander I. prohibited these ad- 
vertisements, but the traffic continued. Even in the case 
of peasants bound to the glebe, their condition depended 
more upon the character of their masters than upon any 
protection afforded to them by the law. Serfdom bore 
with crushing weight upon all the institutions of Russia. 
The wasteful system of agriculture which it encouraged, 
the violation of human rights which it sanctioned, and 
the moral degradation which it imposed upon the com- 
munity, find their best parallel in our own Southern 
States before the war. The nobles themselves, however, 
were more keenly alive to these disadvantages than the 
slave-owners of the South. Public opinion was gradu- 
ally ripening for a change in the system. Russia had its 
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " in the " Recollections of a Sports- 
man," by Turgeneff, and in " Anton the Unfortunate " 
of Irigorovitch. The disasters of the Crimean War were 
generally laid to the charge of the corrupt social organiza- 
tion fostered by this baleful institution, and a large part 
of the proprietors co-operated heartily with the Czar in 
his projects of reform. 

While something may be attributed to the liberal and 
humanitarian views of Alexander, the main cause of his 
great scheme of emancipation was the financial disad- 
vantage of serf labor. The experience of the world 
everywhere is that no such system can be made highly 
productive, that the proper incentives to industry are 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 131 

wanting, and that there is always more or less danger of 
a social catastrophe in the shape of a servile war. Alex- 
ander repeatedly said that it was better to reform from 
above than from below, and he appeared to regard the 
danger of insurrection as formidable. He proceeded by 
gradual steps, and the emancipation was accomplished in 
a masterly manner. So far as crown peasants were con- 
cerned, there was little difficulty ; there was little to 
do but declare them free, to remove the restrictions on 
their right to come and go, to acquire land, and dispose 
of their goods. The Lithuanians, who had shown a 
disposition to aid Alexander in his project, were also 
authorized to free their serfs. 

The great difficulty with proprietary serfage was that 
granting liberty alone was not enough, for the serf, al- 
though subject to his master, had rights in the land. 
The peasant's maxim was : " We are yours, but the land 
is ours." To grant mere liberty to the peasant and to 
leave the land to his master would be to form an immense 
proletariat. All obligations upon the part of the master 
would be removed and the peasant would still be com- 
pletely at his mercy. A system of peonage would be 
established worse than serfdom. It was necessary to se- 
cure to the peasants at least part of the property they 
had cultivated, and to strengthen the village communities 
as a bulwark against pauperism. 

By the edict of 1 861 the peasants were made free, and 
the lands actually occupied by them were granted to 
them. These varied in quantity generally in inverse 
ratio to their fertility ; the average was about nine acres 



132 Slav or Saxon. 

to each male head of a family. The serfs were to pay 
a perpetual rent for the lands granted to them, but they 
were authorized, in their discretion, to purchase these 
lands in fee. Four fifths of the purchase-money was 
loaned to them by the government, and they were to re- 
pay the amount loaned by a series of annual payments, 
extending over fifty years. Most of the peasants avaij^d 
themselves of this right of purchase, and they are stm en- 
gaged in the task of paying for the lands conceded to 
them by the Act of Emancipation. The village govern- 
ment of the mir, with the starosta at its head, was con- 
firmed. These villages were combined in the volost or 
Canton under the starschina. 

During the emancipation many disputes occurred be- 
tween the peasants and their former masters in regard to 
the amount and value of the land which they were to 
receive. Reports had been circulated among them that 
the Czar had made them a free gift of the soil which they 
cultivated, and there was great dissatisfaction when they 
found that they were compelled to pay for land which 
they had always considered their own ; but the tribunals 
to which the government had entrusted the delicate ques- 
tion of appraisement performed their office with great 
skill, and the discontent was finally allayed. 

Much credit is due to the old masters for the disinter- 
ested manner in which these "Arbitrators of the Peace," 
selected from the ranks of the nobility, performed their 
functions. Enfranchisement was effected in Russia in a 
manner far more skilful than in our own country, where it 
was accomplished through the terrible agency of civil war. 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 133 

Yet the Russian people have been perhaps less satisfied 
with its results. 

Subsequent investigation has been made by the govern- 
ment as to the effects of emancipation upon the peas- 
ants. While the ultimate results can scarcely be other- 
wise than good, the temporary inconveniences were very 
great. The serfs have been compelled to work harder 
than ever to pay for the land which they had always 
cultivated and regarded as their own. The complete 
ignorance of the Russian inoujik has laid him open to 
vices which serfdom did much to suppress. Drunken- 
ness has probably increased since emancipation. The peas- 
ants are now free, of course, from the former claims of their 
masters; they used to be obliged to work for him three 
days each week ; they could not change their residence 
without his permission ; the master could sell or mortgage 
the land to which they were attached, permit or forbid 
them to marry, and inflict upon them corporal punish- 
ment. All these things are past. 

Under the new system the land is not granted to the 
peasant personally, but to the village community, by 
which it is held in common. 

This communal system has its advantages and its 
drawbacks. The government collects the taxes, not 
from individuals, but from the viir. In many communi- 
ties the taxes are greater than the rental value of the 
land. In these places the peasants eke out the deficiency 
by industrial pursuits, by the manufacture of articles 
which are sold in the cities and in other parts of the em- 
pire. Many leave their villages and ply their trades else- 



134 Slav or Saxon. 

where, paying to the commune for this privilege their 
ratable proportion of the tax. The rigorous passport sys- 
tem, which prevails in Russia, enables the '>nir to keep 
them in its power, even though they may travel great 
distances in search of work. But in the most fertile parts 
of Russia, including the great zone of the Black Land, the 
produce of the soil is more than sufficient to pay the tax 
and to afford the means of subsistence to the peasants 
who cultivate it. The land is not farmed in common, but 
is divided among the villagers, at periods varying, in dif^ 
erent communities, from one to fifteen years. This distri- 
bution is made by the village assembly, which meets in 
council in the open air, generally upon Sunday, in front 
of the church. 

By this system, the peasants are protected from pauper- 
ism. Each peasant has his own plot of land, and the 
means of gaining a livelihood. Of this he cannot be per- 
manently deprived, even by his own improvidence. But 
the system has its disadvantage in discouraging individual 
enterprise. There is no motive for permanent improve- 
ment of the land, when the man who makes it cannot 
avail himself of the benefit of such improvements. It 
is a system which encourages mediocrity, and consti- 
tutes a bar to any great economical progress. These 
communes are often extremely tyrannical. If one of 
their members is more prudent and successful than the 
rest and saves something, his fellow villagers often compel 
him to disgorge, by fines, capriciously imposed, or by other 
vexatious restraints upon his liberty. It is common for 
the more prosperous peasants to feign poverty. Some- 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 135 

times a moujik will buy the right to leave his commune. 
The fact that the mir, as a whole, is responsible to the 
government for all taxes, as well as for the purchase-money 
of the land (which has been loaned by the State), gives it 
great power in controlling the actions of its members. A 
peasant may be publicly whipped or banished to Siberia 
by his fellow villagers assembled in council. 

A commission of inquiry, instituted by the government 
attributes the slow growth of agriculture to the communal 
system, and yet if these communities were more intelligent, 
and farmed the land together instead of dividing it for short 
periods of time, it might be found that ownership and culti- 
vation in common were well adapted to these vast plains, 
where farmingought to be carried on upon a large scale to be 
most productive, and where the use of improved agricul- 
tural machinery could be undertaken more effectively by 
the commune than by a single individual. Conducted 
by intelligence, co5peration is no more impossible in agri- 
cultural enterprises than in manufactures, where it has 
been conducted with such success through the agency of 
corporations. It is the union of this joint ownership with 
dense ignorance, which, in Russia, retards the advance- 
ment of industry. 

Politically, the consequences of emancipation have been 
very slight. It has not affected, thus far, the power of 
the despotism. Economically, it has added something 
to the stimulus to production, but this is still greatly re- 
strained. Its moral effects have been most important. They 
can be seen in greater freedom of conscience and individual 
responsibility, in the improvement in the condition of the 



1 36 Slav or Saxon. 

women, in the weakening of patriarchal institutions, and 
in the growth of greater individuahsm. Many of the 
peasants have been able, from their savings, to purchase 
small tracts from their former masters, which they culti- 
vate upon their individual account. In the more fertile 
districts land has increased in value. The nobles have 
been the greatest losers by the change. They had an 
easier life of it while serfdom existed. Since its aboli- 
tion they have had to give up their traditional indolence 
and dependence upon the labor of others. They have 
been compelled to shift for themselves. The skilful and 
provident have held their own, while the shiftless and 
careless have lost their all. The land of Russia is gradually 
passing from the hands of the nobles who used to own it 
all, into the hands of the merchants, and the moujiks. 

Individual ownership and joint ownership being found 
side by side in Russia, if the government will withhold 
its hand, the type which is found best adapted to sur- 
rounding conditions will undoubtedly prevail. This non- 
interference, however, is a thing which can never be 
predicated of the Russian administration. Its tendency 
is to direct the most minute affairs of life. 

After emancipation was accomplished, the nobles, in 
consideration of the sacrifices which they had undergone 
in being deprived of their serfs, demanded reforms in 
their own favor. They claimed for themselves a larger 
degree of liberty. Quite radical measures were considered, 
but the discussions were soon met with police interference, 
and a stern reprimand from the Czar. The Poles asked 
for a constitution ; there were great public demonstrations 



The Reforms of Alexander II. 137 

of unarmed men which could only be dispersed by the 
muskets of the soldiery. All Poles compromised in the 
demonstrations were commanded to sell their estates; 
the use of the Polish language and even the Polish alpha- 
bet was forbidden. Catholic churches were closed ; 
whole villages were destroyed. Poland did not share in 
the new institutions which Alexander granted elsewhere. 

Yet it was undoubtedly the intention of the Czar to 
continue still further, along the lines laid out by himself, 
the reforms which he had begun ; and it is now well 
known that his assassination took place on the very day 
when he had resolved to convoke a national assembly 
composed of representatives from the provincial zenistvos. 

It is not strange, therefore, that when Alexander III., 
his son and successor, stood before the mutilated corpse 
of his father, and learned for the first time the particulars 
of the liberal measures which that father had projected, 
he should have adopted the stern reactionary policy which 
has continued with little change down to the present day. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE DESPOTISM OF ALEXANDER III. 

To the eyes of Alexander III. modern ideas were re- 
sponsible for the nihilism and corruption of the rising 
generation. The conclusion was plain that the patri- 
archal Byzantine orthodox Church and the patriarchal 
paternal autocracy were the only salvation for Russia, 
and, through Russia, for the future of the world. Na- 
tionalism — the exclusion of every Western element and 
influence — was to be the talisman of this regeneration. 
The political and religious instruction of Alexander's 
early manhood had been confided to Pobedonostseff, 
who in 1880 became the Procurator of the Holy Synod, 
— the political head of the State Church, — a man distin- 
guished alike for cool, calculating policy and unbending 
fanaticism. Under his guidance Alexander, a man of 
personal honesty, conscientiousness, and purity of life, 
became convinced of the providential destiny of the 
Eastern Church to regenerate the West, and entered upon 
the gloomy career of bigotry and despotism which still 
remain the dominating characteristics of the autocracy. 

Nowhere else in the world is there the same control by 
the central government, not only of local affairs, but of 

138 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 139 

the most minute particulars of individual life. The 
people are treated as if they were minors, incapable of 
doing anything for themselves. " Neither a chair in a 
college nor a bed in a hospital can be endowed without 
the intervention of the State." 

The Russian remains all his life " like a soldier in his 
regiment, who marches, halts, advances, retreats, lifts his 
leg or his foot at the command of the instructing ser- 
geant." Education, the press, and the intelligence and 
virtue of the people are all stifled by this blighting 
influence. 

Thanks to the aid of the rapid auxiliaries furnished by 
modern science ; thanks to steam and electricity, business has 
been more and more concentrated in the hands of the Minis- 
ters. . . . The Russian administration has become like an 
endless chain, along which business has moved mechanically, 
slowly, going up and down, from office to office, to the great 
injury of the interests of the country (Leroy-Beaulieu). 

First, let us consider the policy of Russia in respect to 
education. So completely is the spirit of Russian govern- 
ment opposed to liberal culture, that the universities there 
are not, as with us, simple institutions of learning; they 
are the centres of all that there is. of Russian agitation. 
The university students are almost the only educated per- 
sons in the empire who are not restrained by the caution 
of age or the selfishness of station and property. They 
are almost the only class who discuss, with any freedom, 
political affairs. Hence they are continually subject to 
the interference of the police ; their clubs and unions, and 
even their social meetings, are frequently dispersed. Inqui- 



140 Slav or Saxon. 

rles are made of porters and of the lodging-house keepers, 
as to the habits of the students, whom they entertain, 
what hours they keep, and what company, and how they 
express themselves. An examination of their books and 
papers is frequently made by the police in their absence. 
The police inspector appointed by the government may, 
with the approbation of the curator, expel a student with- 
out inquiry. He can deny scholarships at will, or refuse 
permission to any student to give private lessons, thus 
taking away the student's means of livelihood. Students 
are often banished for mere breaches of scholastic disci- 
pline, the banishment being sometimes permanent exile. 
The police frequently ask for the names of all who have 
been brought before the university tribunals, for the pur- 
pose of adding exile or other government punishment to 
that of the university. The law of 1881 directs the coun- 
cils of the universities to try all students who have been 
tried ajid acquitted by ordinary courts, or who have expi- 
ated their offences against the civil law by a term of im- 
prisonment. If the police certify that the young man 
has acted out of pure thoughtlessness, the council may 
acquit or expel him at its discretion, but should they im- 
pute perverse intent, the council inust expel him. 

When we come to secondary instruction, we find that 
even the schoolboy, from ten to seventeen years of age, 
may be banished for holding wrong political opinions. 
History, Russian literature, and even geography, are 
discouraged by the Minister of Instruction, on account 
of their dangerous tendencies. In the seminaries the 
classics are almost the only things taught. Nine 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 141 

boys out of ten are dropped at examinations. Such a 
system, as Stepniak says, is not a test of proficiency, it 
is a "massacre of the innocents," a plan for depriving the 
vast majority of all chance of a useful career. The " real" 
or scientific schools are few in number, and the in- 
struction afforded by them is imperfect. A more com- 
plete course is given in what is known as the supple- 
mentary section, which, however, is limited to two years. 
The instruction even here is quite superficial. So inade- 
quate are these schools to meet the demand for education, 
that out of a thousand applicants not more than two hun- 
dred are received, but still the government forbids new 
colleges, lest, being recruited from the poorer classes, they 
should become infected with socialism. 

One would think that even a despotism might en- 
courage primary instruction ; yet in Russia, elementary 
education is so restricted that it confers but little benefit 
upon its possessor. Prior to the emancipation in 1861 
there was scarcely any instruction in Russia of this char- 
acter. A considerable number of the schools which were 
supposed to exist, and which were paid for out of the 
exchequer, existed only " on paper " ; that is to say, the 
officers in charge of them simply took the money and put 
it in their pockets. The reports furnished to the de- 
partment were simply fictions. Some primary instruction, 
however, was given by private effort. Finally, in 1864, con- 
trol of elementary instruction was given to the zemstvos, 
or local assemblies. But the revenues of these bodies, for 
all local purposes, industrial, sanitary, and educational, was 
only one twentieth of the entire revenue. They could do 



142 Slav or Saxon. 

but little ; still they started training-schools for teachers, 
but the Minister of Public Instruction vetoed these pro- 
posed normal colleges, deeming them a means of political 
contamination. After the German war he yielded this 
point reluctantly. Then, in 1870, he concluded that the 
primary schools were sources of political propaganda, and 
he created a sort of private police to watch the teachers. 
The character of the instruction and its political tenden= 
cies, with " observations and conjectures," were to be 
reported. The numerous interferences, encouraged by 
the government, render the position of a teacher unbeara- 
ble. The regulation of 1874 limits instruction in the 
primary schools to sacred history, reading, writing, and 
the first four rules of arithmetic. The minister refused 
the petition of the zemstvos to permit the teaching of 
geography and Russian grammar. But in the schools of 
Finland and Poland the Russian language is obligatory. 
The interference of government inspectors is always for 
the purpose of suppressing instruction. In 1879 ^^^^ 
zemstvo of Riazan thanked the inspectors for having 
" abstained from using the means at their disposal to 
thwart the zemstvo in their efforts to promote primary 
instruction and increase the usefulness of the village 
schools." 

The little prosperity that attended primary education 
was derived from the care of these local assemblies, but 
in 1884 the schools were taken from the zemstvos alto- 
gether, and placed in the hands of the ignorant Russian 
clergy, and Pobedonostseff undertook the extraordinary 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 143 

job of dismissing some scores of thousands of village 
school teachers and appointing priests in their stead. 
The priests of Russia are notoriously a worthless class. 
Such is the influence of Russian government on popular 
instruction. 

The despotism is as relentless with the press as with 
education. Since all knowledge is a threat to tyranny, 
the only safe course is to gag the instruments by which 
it can be spread. The censorship is more stringent now 
than it was in the time of Peter the Great. Peter tor- 
tured and put to death the opponents of his reforms, 
but he encouraged general literature. So did Catharine the 
Second at the beginning of her reign, but when the French 
Revolution laid the foundations of popular government in 
Europe, this liberality disappeared ; editors were im- 
prisoned and exiled for advocating ideas which Catharine 
herself had formerly professed. During the stern reign 
of Nicholas, the iron hand of autocracy crushed out all 
the elements of growth. Every manuscript, every news- 
paper article had to be submitted to the censors before 
publication. This censorship still prevails in every part 
of Russia except Moscow and St. Petersburg, and under 
its withering influence the press is practically dead. 

In 1865, during the era of reform, the corrective cen- 
sure was instituted in these two cities. Papers may be 
printed without first submitting them to the censors, but 
if any thing offensive is published, the journal is warned, 
and after three warnings it is suppressed, or the minister 
may suspend publication for three months, without warn- 
ing, or stop sales in the streets, or forbid advertisements. 



144 Slav or Saxon. 

No judicial inquiry is necessary ; he simply does this at 
his own pleasure. Absolute suppression at first required 
a judicial inquiry, but this was too inconvenient. The 
emperor on one occasion, at a ball, ordered two news- 
papers suppressed. The minister usually sends a note to 
the different editors against the publication of various 
matters which he considers it undesirable for the public 
to know, such as "the disturbances among the university 
students," accounts of "political trials," etc. Journals 
vadiY praise, but must not criticise, the acts of the govern- 
ment in Bulgaria; they must not publish comments on the 
decisions of the zemstvos (their own local representative 
bodies); they are forbidden to publish " the report of the 
special commission of the Jews," articles on " peasant 
emigration," articles on " the relation of peasants to other 
landowners," etc., etc., etc. Sometimes newspapers seem 
to be suppressed from mere caprice. In some parts of 
Russia, where the preventive censure exists, the govern- 
ment requires the submission of all articles to a censor 
living in a remote district, involving sometimes fifteen 
days' delay. Daily papers cannot well appear under such 
conditions. The Tiflis Phalanga was suppressed for 
mQvely presenting to the censor a drawing considered un- 
suitable. In 1884 the editor of the Dielo was ordered to 
sell his journal to a Mr. Wolfman, a reactionist, with the 
statement that if he did not, the censors would refuse 
every article presented. Among the works suppressed 
by Russian censorship are Lecky's " History of European 
Morals, "Hobbe's "Leviathan," and Haeckel's" History 
of Creation." 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 145 

By a refinement of tyranny, only possible in Russia, a 
decree of the censure, passed in 1876, forbade the millions 
of inhabitants of Little Russia to print, sell, or circulate 
any works in their own tongue, either original or trans- 
lated. Even the circulation of foreign books in the same 
language is forbidden. The purpose of this decree 
was to compel the people of Little Russia to adopt the 
language of Moscow and St. Petersburg. A whole litera- 
ture has thus been annihilated, and the dialects of the 
Ukraine, in which the lightest and most graceful part of 
Russian genius has expressed itself, have thus been con- 
demned to eternal silence, and the people kept in enforced 
ignorance of all written speech, unless they would consent 
to learn a language other than their own. 

But it is in its judicial system that the Russian govern- 
ment tramples most ruthlessly upon individual rights. 
Whenever the police deem it best, they steal noiselessly 
through the streets and alleys surrounding a private 
dwelling in the dead of night, creep in silence up the 
stairway, gain admittance under some false pretence, and 
invade every room in the house, waking the sleeping oc- 
cupants. Each member of the household is given in 
charge of a policeman, every thing in the house is then 
turned topsy-turvy, books, papers, private letters are care- 
fully inspected — nothing is secret. It is not necessary 
that the police should have any evidence for these searches ; 
an anonymous charge or a mere suspicion is enough. 
Houses have been inspected seven times in a single day, 
sometimes every house in a street is overhauled. If any 
thing is discovered to excite the suspicion of the police, 



146 Slav or Saxon. 

an arrest follows, and the supposed culprit is sent to the 
House of Preventive Detention. There he awaits his 
trial for weeks and months, and sometimes for years. He 
is brought out occasionally for examination. If he con- 
fesses nothing, he is sent back " to reflect." SometiTnes 
the wrong man is arrested and confined a year or two be- 
fore the mistake is discovered. Ponomareff was impris- 
oned thus for three years. 

The solitary confinement to which prisoners are sub- 
jected in this House of Detention is often fatal. Consump- 
tion, insanity, and suicide frequently occur. The exami- 
nation of the prisoners and witnesses is dragged to an 
interminable length ; in the trial of the one hundred and 
ninety-three (one of the celebrated cases), the examination 
lasted four years. Over seven hundred persons, mostly 
witnesses, were kept in the jail during this time. The 
prosecutor said that only twenty persons deserved pun- 
ishment, yet there were seventy-three who died from 
suicide or from the effects of confinement. Confessions 
are frequently extorted by threats of death or of incar- 
ceration in one of the terrible fortresses of Russia. 
Prisoners are deprived of the means of reading and 
writing, to extort evidence from them. The trials are like 
the preliminary proceedings. In 1872 all political cases 
were withdrawn from the ordinary tribunals and " assigned 
to particular Senatorial chambers," appointed by the Em- 
peror. This court could be relied upon to decide in 
compliance with his will. The offence of propagating revo- 
lutionary doctrines is punished by penal servitude for from 
five to nine years ; the punishment is the same as that for 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 147 

robbery or unaggravated murder. A number of young 
girls who had been studying at Zurich became impressed 
with the necessity of a larger liberty and greater equality 
for the oppressed lower classes of Russia ; and knowing 
that they could reach the class whom they aimed to in- 
struct in no other way, they took places in the cotton 
factories of Moscow, and taught their fellow-opera- 
tors fraternity and socialism. This was unaccompa- 
nied by violence or any threat of violence, yet they 
received the terrible sentence of penal servitude, which 
was afterwards commuted to perpetual exile in Siberia. 
When the so-called Terrorist period was inaugurated by 
the use of dynamite, and an attack was made upon the 
life of the Emperor, the trial of political offenders was 
taken away from the civil tribunals and committed to offi- 
cers of the army. Even the counsel for the prisoner 
must be a militar}'- officer, whose rank and fortune were 
wholly at the mercy of the government. He was not al- 
lowed access to the depositions until a few hours before 
the trial. Men have been judged, condemned, and exe- 
cuted in a single day. Others have suffered death before 
their identity could be proved. Men have been arrested 
at night, taken to a private house, tried there by officers, 
and hanged the next day. Mlodetski was sentenced and 
executed without any judicial inquiry. It appears from 
the strongest evidence that these military judges have 
strictly obeyed their masters, and have simply executed 
sentences prescribed beforehand. In one case the death 
penalty was imposed as a cumulative sentence for a num- 
ber of crimes, each punishable by a few years petial servi- 



148 Slav or Saxon. 

tude. General Mrovinsky and others were sentenced to 
banishment because they failed to discover the Petersburg 
mine. Sometimes the secret informant is rewarded by the 
confiscated property of the condemned. Sometimes the 
judges demand instructions from St. Petersburg before 
rendering judgment. Government officials publicly boast 
that the tribunals will do whatever they desire. Even 
the so-called public trials could not be attended without 
a permit from the presiding judge. They were held in 
small apartments, which were so filled with witnesses and 
officers of court that the public could not enter. Then 
the right of the accused to a public trial was limited to 
the presence of three witnesses, and later, this was re- 
stricted to one person, who must be either his wife, his 
parent, or his child. Newspapers cannot publish their 
own accounts of trials, but must copy the official reports. 
After the murder of the Czar, all trials were heard with 
closed doors, the nearest of kin to the accused were ex- 
cluded, and even the inhabitants of the next dwelling had 
often no suspicion that a political trial was going on. 

But a trial is little more than a formality ; if the accused 
is acquitted, the police may arrest him at once and doom 
him to exile, without hearing, upon mere " administrative 
order." 

The secret council of ten in the republic of Venice 
has long been set before the imagination of men as per- 
haps the blackest type in history of that irresponsible and 
arbitrary tyranny which condemns men to punishment 
upon secret charges preferred by unknown accusers with- 
out process of law, and often for no crime, but upon rea- 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 149 

sons of supposed state policy alone ; yet there is in 
Russia to-day a system founded upon the same princi- 
ples, and quite as repugnant to all ideas of justice. Men 
who have never been tried, nor perhaps even accused, but 
who are simply suspectedhy the police, are often, without 
any inquiry whatever, simply as a matter of arbitrary 
will, placed under so-called *' police supervision." This, 
to be effective, must be at some point distant from the 
residence of the man suspected, so that his friends and 
his supposed fellow-conspirators can have no access to 
him ; hence we have a system of so-called administrative 
exile, by which any person, innocent or guilty, may be 
sent at the pleasure of the police to any part of the 
great Russian Empire. Until recently the term of exile 
might be prolonged indefinitely. Indeed, the secret po- 
lice considered that men who suffered from this kind of 
tyranny were not apt to become reconciled, and they were 
not often permitted to return. This exile frequently fol- 
lows an acquittal in court, in cases where no proof of 
guilt can be procured. This system was not formally 
recognized by the code until 1879, after an attempt was 
made upon the Czar's life. At that time, six generals 
were appointed over six districts of the empire, with the 
right to exile by administrative order " all persons whose 
stay might be considered prejudicial to the public welfare, 
to imprison at discretion, to suppress or suspend any 
journal, to take such measures as might be necessary for 
the public safety." The general terms of their authority 
were in language almost identical with the power given to 
the Roman dictators, to see to it " that the common- 



1 50 Slav or Saxon. 

wealth should suffer no harm." There are instances of 
exile without proof or trial to the desert wastes of East- 
ern Siberia. Men have been banished simply because 
they belonged to " a dangerous family." Men have been 
sent to the frozen North because the police have confused 
their names with those of others whom they have suspect- 
ed. Often the discovery of the mistake did not lead to a 
revocation. We have instances of exile where the order 
itself declares that they have been found innocent of any 
crime. 

Witness the following : 

The gendarmerie department of Moscow accused Mr. Isidor 
Goldsmith and his wife Sophia of having come to Moscow intent 
on founding a central revolutionary committee. After a mi- 
nute domiciliary search and an examination for the discovery 
of proofs, the charges brought against the before-mentioned 
persons were found to be quite without justification. Conse- 
quently the Minister of the Interior and the Chief of the Gen- 
darmerie decree that Isidor Goldsmith and Sophia his wife be 
transported to Archangelsk, and there placed under the super- 
vision of the local police. 

The exile never knows his accusers, and is often wholly 
ignorant of the reason for which he is transported. These 
exiles are forbidden to teach, lecture, print, photograph, 
practise medicine, sell books or papers, act as librarian, or 
serve in the government employment, such occupations 
being considered " dangerous to the State." The local 
government may veto any other occupation which is con- 
sidered undesirable. The exiles are allowed six to eight 
rubles a month (about $5.00) for their support, if they 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 151 

are of noble birth, otherwise only half of that amount. 
Many of them find it scarcely possible to support life in a 
strange country with these restrictions. All their letters 
are examined by the police. Even their literary societies 
are broken up. It is dangerous for others to become in- 
timate with them. The report of an able Russian ofificer 
to the government contains the following remarkable 
words : 

From the experience of past years, and my own personal 
observation, I have arrived at the conclusion that administra- 
tive exile for political causes tends rather to exasperate a man 
and infect him with perverse ideas, than to correct him (cor- 
rection being the ofificially declared object of exile). The 
change from a life of ease to a life of privation, from life in 
the bosom of society to separation from all society, from an 
activity more or less active to an enforced inaction, — all this 
produces an effect so disastrous that often, especially of late, 
there have occurred among the exiles cases of madness, of sui- 
cide, and attempted suicide. 

Men have been exiled in this manner and sent on foot 
with gangs of malefactors to the country of the Yakoutes, 
savages of Eastern Siberia, where they must live in the 
filthy and wretched huts of these half-naked barbarians, 
whose language they cannot speak, whose food they can- 
not eat. Few men survive this transportation more than 
a few years. 

Leroy-Beaulieu thus speaks of this system of exile by 
order of the Police of State : 

No engine of despotism, not even, perhaps, the Spanish 



152 Slav or Saxon. 

Inquisition, has cut down so many human beings and crushed 
so many lives, since none has ever acted more discreetly and 
with less noise. There is no list of martyrs so long as that 
of this State Chancellery. The number of its victims, of 
every rank, of every age, of both sexes, is the harder to 
estimate, since, in place of public autos-da-f^, it surrounded 
them almost always with mystery, and hid them in the silent 
snows of Siberia, and being able to get rid of them without 
having blood upon its hands, and without hearing their cries, 
it was itself so much the less scrupulous and compassionate. 

The State Police has remained mistress of the right to im- 
prison, to bury, to banish whomsoever it desires. Under 
Alexander III., as under Alexander II., the High Police remains 
sovereign, independent of justice and the courts, and has no 
account to render, except to its chief or to the Emperor. 

Another law provides that administrative exile shall 
not exceed five years, and that it must be approved by a 
commission composed of two delegates from the Ministry 
of the Interior and two from the Ministry of Justice. 
This commission may, if they choose, ask the accused to 
appear and defend himself. As a guaranty for liberty 
this discretionary formality is absolutely illusory. The 
sum total of injustice and misery will not be materially 
lessened in any such way. 

But even where there has been a trial by the courts, 
very little is settled by the judgment. The fatal point is, 
after conviction, to know where the condemned shall go, 
for there is all the difference in the world between being 
sent to the mines of Siberia and to the fortresses of 
Russia. The friends of the condemned importune the 



The Despotism of A lexander III. 153 

government to send him to Siberia. His wife, his 
mother, or his betrothed make long journeys to St, 
Petersburg and clamor everywhere for this mitigation of 
sentence, and the condemned is happy indeed if he is sent 
to that terrible land of chains and ice. One would think 
it was hard enough to be condemned to labor in the 
mines, yet the Siberian prisoner thinks it a privilege, for 
the hardest toil is a lighter punishment than solitary con- 
finement. 

Siberian prisons, in a land where the cold is sixty 
degrees below zero, are deemed a paradise to the great 
prisons of Russia, in which political offenders are confined 
as in a living tomb. The best among the latter is the 
central prison, at Novo Belgorod. This is a great peni- 
tentiary for the worst grade of malefactors as well as 
political convicts. The common criminals live and work 
together, but the political offenders are doomed to soli- 
tary confinement. Each lives alone in silence in his little 
cell. Even their exercise is taken separately, so that they 
cannot meet. The brigands and murderers confined with 
them are treated with greater consideration. In July, 
1878, the political prisoners refused to eat, because they 
were denied the right to work in the prison and in the 
workshops with the rest. For eight days they tasted 
nothing, and became so weak that they could not rise 
from their beds, until the governor-general promised com- 
pliance with their request, which promise he afterwards 
violated. Yet these men had been guilty of nothing but 
the simple propagation of the doctrines of socialism. 
There had been no violence nor breach of law other than 



154 Slav or Saxon. 

teaching this heresy. These prisoners, contrary to the 
laws of the prison, were put in irons on the slightest pre- 
tence, or thrown into the punishment cells, cages so small 
that men cannot stand in them, or deprived of books at 
the caprice of their brutal jailors, and beds taken away 
even from the sick. Once, when a prisoner who had 
served his probation term was put in irons against the 
rules of the prison, a petition was sent to the governor- 
general, who, in his decision, admitted that the director 
had no right to put the prisoner in irons, but, neverthe- 
less, ordered all the prisoners who had signed the petition 
to be manacled, on the ground that they had insulted the 
director by their complaint, and he gave to each of them 
from one to three days in the black hole. The men impris- 
oned at Novo Belgorod had done nothing but distribute 
socialistic pamphlets. When the work of nihilism went 
to greater lengths, and violence was resorted to, these 
prisoners, who were wholly innocent, were made to feel 
the consequences. Their books were taken away from 
them, they were put in irons, their relatives were exiled 
to distant provinces and sent to Siberia ; even the ven- 
tilating orifices of their cells were closed, so that they 
could scarcely breathe. Of young men in the prime of 
life, many died. Within four years, out of fourteen 
prisoners confined in the rear cells to the right, five went 
mad, and filled the prison with their bowlings. Some 
died insane in their cells. 

But this prison is used only for lighter punishment, for 
those who have not been guilty of crimes of violence. 
Those charg^ed with heavier offences are immured within 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 155 

the walls of Schliisselberg, or in the fortress of Peter and 
Paul. To what doom they are condemned in the first of 
these great silent tombs, no one knows, for the voice of 
those who are buried there has seldom reached the out- 
side world. For those who pass within its accursed walls, 
the superscription of the infernal gates is written thereon : 
" All hope abandon, ye who enter here." Their destiny 
is fixed forever; there is no hope, no word, no return. 
But the fortress of Peter and Paul, situated, as it is, 
in the very capital of the nation, cannot be so completely 
isolated. This is the great Bastile of Russia. It has its 
traditions like that of the Man in the Iron Mask. This 
fortress is under military government, every attendant is 
a soldier, and the prisoners are forbidden to speak, not 
only to each other, but to their jailers. The jailers visit 
their cells in pairs to prevent collusion. They are im- 
mured in alternate cells, so that they may not communi- 
cate with each other by raps or signals. Spies are placed 
in the intervening chambers, to extract testimony which 
cannot be otherwise secured. Men have been confined in 
this fortress many years and no one knew where they 
were. The identity of these prisoners is concealed by a 
simple numeral, and their names are often unknown to 
the jailers who attend them. 

The effect of this crushing despotism on the natural 
life of Russia is thus graphically stated by Stepniak. 

Despotism has stricken with sterility the high hopes to which 
the splendid awakening of the iirst half of the century gave 
birth. Mediocrity reigns supreme. . . . All the leaders 
of our zemstvos, mod.-st as are their functions, belong to an 



156 Slav or Saxon. 

older generation. The living forces of later generations have 
been buried by the government in Siberian snows and Esqui- 
maux villages. It is worse than the pest. A pest comes and 
goes ; but the government has oppressed the country for 
twenty years, and may go on oppressing it for who knows how 
many years longer. The pest kills indiscriminately, but the 
present regime chooses its victims from the flower of the na- 
tion, taking all on whom depend its future and glory. It is 
not a political party whom they crush ; it is a nation of a hun- 
dred millions whom they stifle. 

This is what is done in Russia under the Czars ; this is the 
price at which the government buys its miserable existence. 

One would think that the more intelligent people of 
Russia would abandon a country thus infected ; but even 
this poor privilege is denied them ; they cannot lawfully 
leave the empire, nor even their own town, without the 
consent of their government. 

Every Russian found without a passport is an outlaw, 
to be hunted down by the authorities. 

In 1879 the police of Tiflis, having received an order to ar- 
rest for expulsion all persons without passports living in the 
city, there was a general flight among workmen, small mer- 
chants, coachmen, and servants, so that from lack of hands a 
thrifty population suddenly found itself in the greatest diffi- 
culty. Instead of heeding the demands of the police, those in- 
terested fled by thousands, so as not to be brought back to 
their homes by chain-gangs, as the law prescribed. Money 
only could obtain relief from the hardships of the law. 

Political trials have shown that many unfortunates have been 



The Despotism of Alexander III. 157 

cast into the party of anarchy and revolution by the lack of a 
passport or the loss of their papers.' 

Anywhere the Russian may go he can never lose his 
citizenship. Russia does not admit the right of any sub- 
ject to abandon his allegiance, and will not permit any 
naturalization elsewhere to interfere with her claims upon 
his obedience. 

' Leroy-Beaulieu. • 



CHAPTER X. 



FINLAND. 



We can foretell the fate of liberal institutions if sub- 
jected to Russian domination, by the course pursued by 
the Russian Empire in recent years in respect to Finland. 

The Grand Duchy of Finland was, prior to 1808, a part 
of the kingdom of Sweden. It possessed liberal institu- 
tions, and a written Constitution in the shape of certain 
fundamental laws enacted by a Diet of the various Es- 
tates of the country, and approved by the king. 

Russia undertook the conquest of the country, as a 
result of the treaty of Tilsit ; the Southern portion of 
the duchy was easily subdued, but there was an obstinate 
resistance among the lakes and hills of the North. The 
Czar, Alexander I., needed all his strength for a proposed 
attack upon the Ottoman Empire, and he determined to 
win the Finns by conciliation. 

A body of representative Finlanders was accordingly 
invited to St. Petersburg to confer with the Czar, and 
Baron Mannerheim, their spokesman, pointed out to him 
that the people of Finland were a free nation subject to 
their own laws. On December i, 1808, a memorial was 
presented asking that a legal Diet should be summoned. 

158 



Finland. 1 59 

Inquiries were made by the Russian Foreign Secretary, 
as to the respective rights of the monarch and the Estates 
under the Swedish Constitution, and Mannerheim in his 
answer stated that the sovereign could make no change 
in the fundamental laws, nor could he impose new taxes 
without the consent of the Estates. 

The Czar also caused an official report to be prepared 
concerning the Swedish Constitution, from which it ap- 
peared that the Estates of the kingdom were composed 
of four orders, the nobility, the clergy, the burghers, and 
the peasants, and since all questions had to be discussed 
by each order, no point on which the Diet must deliberate 
could be sanctioned by the sovereign, unless adopted by 
at least three of these orders. 

The citizens, without exception, were to be free, and 
protected both in life and property. 

The right of the sovereign was that of providing for 
the offices. Such places as required confidence were at 
his disposition and he had the power to dismiss with- 
out formality those who failed in their duties, but for all 
the other places, three persons were presented, from 
whom he chose one, and these could not be removed 
except by legal proceedings and formal judgment. The 
sovereign fixed the salaries, as well as certain special 
charges — for example, postage, stamped paper, etc., but 
all other imposts depended upon the Estates. 

On January 20, 1809, Alexander, having informed him- 
self respecting the constitutional rights of the sovereign 
and the people, issued a decree calling a Diet at Borga. 
His decision, he states, is taken " conformably to the 



i6o Slav or Saxon. 

constitutions of the country " ; and he afterwards said to 
Mannerheim that he " considered it an honor to rule over 
a free people with laws of its own." 

The Diet convened on March 15th, and on the follow- 
ing day the Czar delivered a speech from the throne, in 
which he said: " I have promised to maintain your con- 
stitution, your fundamental laws. Your assembling here 
guarantees to you the fulfilment of my promise." Two 
days later the "Act of Assurance," a written pledge, 
signed by the Czar, was read in the cathedral in his pres- 
ence, confirming and ratifying the general and funda- 
mental laws of the land, as well as the privileges and 
rights which the inhabitants had hitherto enjoyed, and he 
adds, "We promise to maintain all these benefits and 
laws firm and immutable in their full force." 

On March 17th he issued a Manifesto to the same 
effect, and these two documents have ever since kept 
their places on the walls of every church in Finland, and 
have been pointed out, by father to son, as Russia's 
word of honor to the country. 

On September 14, 18 10, the Czar, in a letter of instruc- 
tions to Count Steinheil, whom he had just appointed 
governor of Finland, states that his object in giving these 
assurances was: "To give to the people a political exist- 
ence, so that they shall not regard themselves as subjects 
of Russia, but as attached to her by their own evident in- 
terests, and for this reason not only their civil laws but 
also their political laws have been retained." 

The Finnish Diet was not again summoned during the 
reign of Alexander I., nor under his successor, Nicholas 



Fittland. i6i 

I. ; but this was no violation of the Constitution. The 
sovereign could impose no new taxes, but a tax once 
legally imposed was levied from year to year. When 
fresh taxation was necessary, or new laws were called for, 
the sovereign summoned a Diet, but this was a matter 
wholly within his discretion. 

That even Nicholas I., the most autocratic of Czars, 
recognized the Constitution of Finland, appears from the 
fact that in 1826, when he determined to abolish the 
death penalty in ordinary cases, he based his decree in 
Finland on the right conferred on him by the funda- 
mental laws. 

Every Russian Czar down to the present time has, 
upon his accession, renewed in writing the "Act of As- 
surance" guaranteeing the Finnish Constitution, and it 
is only after such renewal that the Finnish officials take 
the oath of allegiance. Each Czar becomes Grand Duke 
of Finland upon ascending the throne, but his rights and 
powers as Czar and as Grand Duke are quite distinct. 

In 1863, Alexander II. again convened the Diet. In 
his speech from the throne he stated that he had author- 
ized the Government of the Grand Duchy to contract 
loans solely to meet the requirements of the Crimean War 
and to cover the expense of constructing the railway be- 
tween Helsingfors and Tavastehus. Although the reve- 
nues of the State then existing were sufficient gradually 
to pay off the debts authorized by the Czar, and although 
by Section 45 of the Finnish fundamental law of 1772 
the sovereign, in case of disaster or attack upon the 
realm, might impose additional taxes upon the people, 



1 62 Slav or Saxon. 

he still felt, perhaps, some doubt as to the legality or 
propriety of these loans, for he adds : "It is my wish, how- 
ever, that for the future no new loans be raised without 
the concurrence of the Estates of the Grand Duchy, un- 
less an unexpected invasion of the enemy or some other 
unforeseen national calamity should make it a necessity 
for us." 

Considering its harsh climate and barren soil, the 
country had thriven greatly under Russian rule, and the 
Finlanders, a reserved and taciturn, but energetic and in- 
telligent people, had not only exhibited great patriotism 
and love for the institutions of their country, but also a 
deep devotion and loyalty to the Czars who had protected 
them. When Alexander III. ascended the throne and 
confirmed the constitution of Finland, he said : 

We do so with great satisfaction, keeping in gracious remem- 
brance the many proofs of unfailing gratitude to their sovereign 
and benefactor, given by the inhabitants of that country, by 
which they brightened the reign of our never-to-be-forgotten 
father, who always kept their welfare in mind. 

During the latter days of the reign of Alexander III., 
however, his project of forming a "closer union with the 
Grand Duchy" gave much concern, and there were fore- 
bodings of evil days to come. According to the state- 
ment of M. de Plehve, in his article in the Review of 
Reviews, dated August 19, 1 903, it appears that measures 
were already drafted as early as 1893, for arbitrarily 
changing the military system of Finland. Such meas- 
ures, however, were never promulgated. It remained for 



Finland. 163 

Nicholas II., the advocate of peace and disarmament, to 
overthrow the constitution of the country, which he as 
well as his predecessors had sworn to maintain. 

We have seen that the sovereign had no power to 
change the laws already enacted. The provisions of the 
fundamental law of 1772, which had been confirmed as 
part of the constitution by all of the Czars, are clear and 
precise. Sections 40 and 41 are as follows: "The King 
shall make no new law, nor abolish an old one, without 
the knowledge and consent of the Estates ; the Estates of 
the Realm shall abolish no old law, nor make a new law 
without the King's yea and consent." And the "Law 
of the Diet" approved by Alexander II., in 1869, de- 
clares: "A fundamental law can be made, altered, inter- 
preted, or repealed only on the representation of the 
Emperor and Grand Duke, and with the consent of the 
Estates." 

The procedure observed when a new law was desired 
was as follows : The Emperor, having prepared the 
scheme in consultation with the Secretary of State for 
Finland, forwarded it to the Finnish Senate. The Sen- 
ate then examined the bill with the assistance of the Pro- 
curator-General as to the legal questions involved, and 
the measure was then laid before the Diet, which might 
approve, amend, or reject. It then went back to the 
Emperor, and if he accepted it in the manner in which it 
finally passed the Diet, it was signed and promulgated. 
Otherwise the proposal came to nothing. It could not 
be amended by the Emperor, nor any one else, after it 
had passed the Diet. 



164 Slav or Saxon. 

But on the 15th of February, 1899, the Czar issued an 
Imperial Manifesto, overthrowing this constitutional pro- 
cedure. In this Manifesto he declares that Finland 
possesses "special institutions with regard to interior 
administration and legislation," but that there are also 
"other legislative questions which, on account of their 
intimate connection with the general interests of the 
Empire, cannot be exclusively treated and decided by 
the institutions of the Grand Duchy"; that "In regard 
to the manner in which such questions are to be decided 
the laws do not contain any definite stipulations, and the 
lack of these has brought about serious difficulties," to 
remedy which the Czar declares that he has seen fit to 
establish "a fixed and unchangeable order" in elaborating 
and issuing laws of general interest and importance for 
the empire. And he adds ; 

"We have found it necessary to reserve to Ourselves the 
ultimate decision as to zvhich laws come within the scope 
of the general legislation of the Empire ' ' ; whereupon he 
establishes certain "Fundamental Statutes" providing 
that after the Imperial consent has been obtained for the 
issuing of such laws, affecting the Grand Duchy, the Min- 
ister shall communicate with the Governor-General of 
Finland, the Secretary of State of Finland, and the Sen- 
ate of Finland, in order to get their opinion in regard to 
the wording of the law. As to these general laws, the 
Diet is not to be consulted at all, and the Czar has the 
sole right to determine what these laws shall be. 

With respect to other legislative proposals handed over 
to the Diet, the opinioji (not the final conclusion) of the 



Finland. 165 

Diet is to be given at its next session. The laws of both 
kinds are then to be handed over to the Imperial Council 
at St. Petersburg, by whom they are to be examined, 
with the co-operation of the Governor-General, the Sec- 
retary of State for Finland, and the senators specially 
appointed by the Emperor for this purpose, and the 
decision of the Russian Imperial Council is then to be 
promulgated. This takes away the authority of the Diet, 
the one representative body in Finland, in every case, at 
the discretion of the Czar; and even the Finnish Senate 
consisting wholly of persons nominated by the Czar, is 
only to be consulted in regard to the "wording" of the 
law. The Imperial Council at St. Petersburg becomes 
the only substantial legislative body. Thus the constitu- 
tion of Finland was swept away at the stroke of the pen. 

When this Manifesto came before the Finnish Senate, 
there was no difference of opinion as to its illegality. 
There was a question, however, as to whether the Senate 
should refuse to publish it, or should publish it under 
protest. And that body being evenly divided, it was 
published by the casting vote of the presiding ofBcer. 

The Procurator General gave a written opinion that it 
was a violation of the "Form of Government" of 1772, 
and of the "Law of the Diet" of April, 1869; that His 
Imperial Majesty could not have been informed how 
vitally the constitution had been affected, and that the 
Senate ought to appeal to the Czar. 

A unanimous protest was accordingly drawn up, re- 
minding the Czar that legislative proposals ought to be 
handed over to the Diet, to be decided by that body, and 



1 66 Slav or Saxon. 

that the Manifesto must be regarded as a suppression of 
the constitutional rights of the Finnish people, which 
that people was not conscious of having forfeited through 
any conduct of its own. 

When the Senate and Procurator-General went to St. 
Petersburg with this remonstrance, they were not re- 
ceived by the Emperor, and their petition came back 
with the Imperial endorsement: "Does not deserve any 
intervention." 

The Estates of the Duchy through their law committee 
also resolved to send in a protest, declaring that, since the 
Manifesto had come into existence without the co-opera- 
tion of the Diet, it could not have the force of law. The 
presiding officers of each of the four Estates went to 
St. Petersburg to present the petition, but they were not 
received; the Secretary of State announced that His Ma- 
jesty felt greatly moved because they had thought that 
he would break his word, and considered that he had 
given the country the best guarantee for the preservation 
of its home legislation, when he himself undertook in 
every separate case to decide if a matter ought to be 
classed under Imperial legislation. 

Next the people themselves resolved to make an 
appeal to the Emperor, There was no organization to 
collect signatures, but volunteers undertook the work and 
within ten days half a million names were secured, and 
a delegate was appointed from each parish to go to St. 
Petersburg and present a petition asking that the Czar 
should graciously direct that the contents of his Manifesto 
be brought into conformity with Finland's fundamental 



Finland. 167 

laws. The Czar refused to receive the deputation, but in 
his behalf the State Secretary assured the leaders of the 
delegates that he did not intend to violate the Finnish 
constitution, whereupon Mr. Wolff, the delegate from 
Viborg, replied : 

We have been used to bearing up under severe destinies. 
The frost has times without number ravaged our sterile fields, 
and the farmer has in one night lost the fruits of a whole year's 
heavy toil; but we have humbly borne these trials, supporting 
one another and trusting in the future, for these ravages have 
always left some of us untouched; but such a night-frost as 
that of February 15 th the Finnish people have never known — 
with one stroke of the pen the dearest thing we possessed and 
hoped to deliver unimpaired, if not increased, to our children 
was destroyed that night. Here are none untouched — high 
and low, rich and poor, all of us, are alike struck by this visita- 
tion of fate. 

Ask His Majesty if he is rich enough to throw away the 
devotion and love of such a people. 

Mr. Wolff was at that time the British Vice-Consul at 
Viborg. The Russian Government secured his dismissal 
on the ground of his taking part in political propaganda, 
and later imposed upon him, by administrative order, 
without trial or judicial proceedings of any kind, the ter- 
rible sentence of exile from the land he so dearly loved. 

A clear violation of the constitution of Finland also 
appears in the Military Service Law, promulgated by the 
Czar, without the consent of the Estates. In the "Form 
of Government" of 1772, no conscription could take place 



1 68 Slav or Saxon. 

without the consent of the Estates, and Alexander I., in 
his proposals to the Borga Diet, pledged himself that 
there should not be in Finland, "either then or there- 
after, any military conscription, or other measure of the 
kind contrary to the laws," 

In 1877, General Miliutin proposed to Alexander II. 
that a new army project then proposed for the Empire 
should be extended to Finland by decree. But since 
such decree would be illegal, Alexander ordered that its 
provisions should be submitted to the Diet. There 
were many questions at issue between that body and the 
War Office, but in 1878 a measure was agreed to, by which 
the Finnish army was established upon the footing which 
it retained up to 1899, All Finlanders were liable to 
service for three years with the active army, and two 
with the reserves, but they were required to serve in Fin- 
nish regiments only, and under Finnish officers. The 
number of men with the colors was fixed at five thousand. 
These conditions were accepted by the Czar. 

In 1898 it became evident that further changes were 
required, but it was supposed that these would be sub- 
mitted to the Diet as required by the Constitution. Then 
it was learned that the Czar was preparing a decree not 
only increasing the military contingent of Finland four- 
fold, but providing for the raising of that force by a con- 
scription, in violation of the constitution, and this too at 
the very time that he was preparing his Peace Manifesto, 
which led to the Tribunal of The Hague. At this time 
also General Bobrikoff, a soldier who had been engaged 
in the "Russification" of the Baltic provinces and whose 



Finland. 169 

despotic measures have since rendered his name infamous, 
was appointed Governor-General of Finland. 

Fourteen paragraphs of the Military Service Law of 
1878 were declared therein to be "fundamental laws," and 
by the "Law of the Diet," passed in 1869 with the ap- 
proval of the Czar, it was provided that a fundamental 
law could only be altered or repealed with the consent of 
the Estates. 

The Czar sent to the Diet for its "opinion" a proposi- 
tion for a new military service law, with a scheme for 
the organization of the army, but inasmuch as the exist- 
ing law could not be altered, except by a new law ap- 
proved by the Diet, the Estates declined simply to report 
their "opinion." They were willing to consider, how- 
ever, in any constitutional form, the question as to the 
proper military contribution from Finland, as well as the 
uniformity of the organization of the Finnish troops with 
the rest of the Russian army, and they made to the Czar 
a proposal of their own, by which every citizen of Fin- 
land was liable to compulsory military service for the 
defence of the whole Russian Empire, as well as the 
throne and the fatherland, but the Finnish subject was to 
do duty only in the Finnish army, since Finnish lads, if 
placed in Russian regiments, not understanding the Rus- 
sian language, nor the temperament and ideas of their 
companions, would be placed at a serious disadvantage. 
To raise the army fourfold, or to twenty thousand men, 
in time of peace, would be ruinous to the country, and 
the Diet insisted that it should not be raised beyond 
twelve thousand men, to be stationed in their own 



I/O Slav or Saxon. 

provinces in the Duchy, and used primarily for the defence 
of Finland, though also for the defence of the empire, 
when no attack on Finland was anticipated. The Es- 
tates, in concluding their humble reply to the Czar, 
represented : 

That the Military Service Law now in force, which was 
passed in the order prescribed by the constitution of the land, 
cannot be altered or abolished otherwise than by the concur- 
rent decision of the Emperor and Grand Duke and the Estates, 

That in case Your Imperial Majesty should, however, find 
that a special method of making laws that are to be of common 
application to the Empire and to Finland is called for, the 
Estates expect that Your Imperial Majesty will be pleased to 
lay before the Estates, in order that it may be treated accord- 
ing to law, a Gracious Proposition containing a scheme for 
such an alteration of the Fundamental Laws of the country 
as is necessary for that purpose. 

The Diet was closed on May i8, 1899, by a formal Im- 
perial message. Baron von Troil, who headed the Estates 
when they listened to this message, spoke as follows : 

Latterly an opinion has more and more asserted itself ac- 
cording to which the highest statesmanship consists in the 
assimilation of the smaller races, without taking into considera- 
tion the national conditions and the historical development of 
such peoples. Finland under self-government has hitherto 
always been law-abiding, and has never caused anxiety to 
Russia, and the real interests of Russia would be best pre- 
served if the so-called "stranger" peoples, amongst whom the 
Finns are numbered, were permitted to follow that path of 



Finland. 1 7 1 

development marked out for them by history. Russia would 
then have in the Finns a faithful, peace-loving people, which, 
although pursuing its own civilizing mission, would at the same 
time willingly and joyfully fulfil those obligations towards 
Russia which can be justly imposed upon Finland. 

The Czar thus answered this speech in a letter to the 
Governor-General, on June 22d. 

To my regret, I perceive from the speeches of the Marshal 
of the Nobles and the Speakers, that the representatives of the 
country failed to accept the considerations of general State 
utility upon which the necessity of those measures depends, 
and allowed themselves the expression of unwarrantable opin- 
ions on the subject. I authorize you to declare at large that 
those opinions are incorrect, and that they do not correspond 
with the position of affairs established since the beginning of 
the present century, whereby Finland forms an integral and 
inseparable portion of the Russian state.' 

The military service law finally promulgated as a 
Manifesto of the Czar, on June 29, 1901, was in its essen- 
tial features nearly the same as the original Russian pro- 
posal to which such strong objections had been urged. 
Russian officers were to be employed in the Finnish army, 
and they thereby acquired the status of the Finnish citi- 
zens; promotion was made dependent upon a knowledge 
of the Russian language ; the Russian system of reserves 
was substituted for the Finnish system ; the term of ser- 
vice was eighteen years, three years with the colors and 

' I am under special obligations to the excellent work of J. R. Fisher, 
" Finland and the Tsars," for the foregoing facts regarding Finland. 



1/2 Slav or Saxon. 

fifteen years with the reserves; the number of men re- 
quired was to be fixed each year upo7t the proposition of 
the Minister of War, thus making it absolutely depen- 
dent on the discretion of a Russian officer; the Fiimish 
regiments, in peace or war, were liable to service anywhere 
in Russia, or abroad ; and the Finnish staff was abolished, 
as well as the office of a Finnish Commander-in-chief. 

The Czar, in his Manifesto, repealed the Military Ser- 
vice Law of 1870, which, constitutionally, he had no more 
right to repeal without the consent of the Diet, than had 
the Emperor of Germany. The Finnish army, as such, 
now ceased to exist. The Czar declared that the su- 
preme administration of the regiments, "the ranks of 
which were preferably to be filled up by natives of Fin- 
land," lay with the Minister of War; the decision as to 
the equipment and maintenance of those regiments was 
made dependent on the Czar's discretion, though the ex- 
penses were to be defrayed out of the Finnish exchequer. 
A number of Senators declined to join in promulgating 
this law. They were punished by dismissal. The re- 
mainder addressed to the Czar a representation setting 
forth the fact that the new law had been enacted without 
the co-operation of the representatives of the people, and 
asked him to turn from the height of the throne to his 
faithful Finnish people, with a gracious declaration that 
might expel the doubts and calm the agitation of the 
country. 

Governor-General Bobrikoff recommended His Majesty 
to pay no attention to this representation. The Em- 
peror accordingly replied that he did not find the present 



Finland. 173 

occasion suitable to address to the people a new assur- 
ance as to the maintenance of their local institutions. 

It now became the duty of the clergy to promulgate 
the new law by reading it from their pulpits, but many 
clergymen refused to do this ; others applied to the Senate 
to be relieved from an obligation contrary to their con- 
science, whereupon the Senate instructed the consistory 
courts to order the reading of the edicts. In other par- 
ishes where the pastors read the law, congregations left 
the churches, or protested against the reading. 

A new mass address from the people was then pre- 
pared and given to the Finnish Senate for transmission 
to the Czar. 

His reply, contained in a letter from M. de Plehve to 
General Bobrikoff, on December 21, 1901, called attention 
to the fact that the address was signed by a number of 
persons holding office and that such action could not be 
tolerated. It directed that future appointments must be 
made from those who had not taken part in political 
manifestations, and it was followed by the dismissal of 
prominent officials who had signed the address. 

Meanwhile the members of the medical board of Fin- 
land sent in their resignations, to escape from the obliga- 
tion of appointing physicians to take part in the illegal 
levy of recruits; the majority of the communes refused 
to elect representatives upon the illegal conscription 
boards, and although fines were imposed, amounting, in 
some cases, to 43,000 marks, still some of these com- 
munes persisted in their refusal; but the chief obstacle 
to the execution of the Emperor's Manifesto was the 



1/4 Slav or Saxon. 

absence of the young men summoned to attend. Less 
than forty per cent, responded to the call. In some par- 
ishes none appeared. In Helsingfors, out of 857 lads sum- 
moned, only fifty-six put in an appearance ; and this, too, 
although the Czar had issued a rescript warning the peo- 
ple "that the non-appearance of conscripts would lead to 
the conviction that the methods of administration, which 
had prevailed in Finland during the last century, were 
inadequate to safeguard the development of political 
institutions and to secure obedience to the law." 

One would suppose that if anything came within the 
meaning of the term "local institutions" to be respected 
by the Czar, according to his own Manifesto of February, 
1899, the language to be spoken in Finland should be in- 
cluded. Yet in June, 1900, the Czar issued a Manifesto 
requiring that in the office of the Secretary of State for 
Finland, in the Chancellery of the Governor-General, and 
in the official passport office all business should be trans- 
acted exclusively in Russian, and that the Senate of 
Finland, and its subordinate offices, should also use the 
Russian language, although oral statements were allowed 
in Swedish or Finnish for a period of five years, and 
documents might be read in the language in which they 
were written. This ordinance also was promulgated 
without the consent of the Estates, and indeed just after 
the Finnish Diet had dissolved. 

The hardship attending such a measure appears in the 
fact that, out of the officials affected, hardly one third 
had any knowledge whatever, of the Russian language. 

Members of the Diet accordingly addressed M. de 



Finland. 175 

Plehve, Secretary of State for Finland, a letter of remon- 
strance showing that it would be impossible to find com- 
petent men who could combine a thorough knowledge of 
Russian with other requirements of their official duties, 
since out of 2,700,000 inhabitants of Finland, only 8000 
had learned Russian as their native tongue. This letter, 
however, remained wholly without effect. 

But all the arbitrary measures above described were 
found to be insufficient and unsatisfactory to the govern- 
ment at St. Petersburg, and in September, 1902, new or- 
dinances were promulgated reconstructing the internal 
government of Finland, according to the will of the 
Autocrat. 

By the original constitution of Finland, immediately 
under the Governor-General came the Government Coun- 
cil, half of whose members were assigned to the Depart- 
ment of Justice, forming a Supreme Court, while the 
others constituted the Department of Economy, and 
were placed in charge- of different branches of the admin- 
istration. 

Alexander I. changed the name of this body to "Our 
Senate for Finland," without change, however, in its or- 
ganization, and he added: "We at the same time most 
sincerely promise that the members of this, our Finnish 
Senate, shall in the future, as in the past, be chosen 
solely from among native or naturalized Finnish citizens." 

The members of the Senate are appointed by the Czar 
on the recommendation of the Governor-General. When 
the present Czar began his encroachments upon the Con- 
stitution, he found it necessary to get rid of the Senators 



176 Slav or Saxon. 

who opposed his plans. Of the twenty and odd members 
in that body when General Bobrikoff was appointed in 
1898, the great majority either resigned or were dismissed 
for not co-operating in the illegal measures of the Czar. 
For example, nearly half the Senate voted against pro- 
mulgating the Manifesto of February 15, 1899, and this 
minority soon resigned, with one or two exceptions; 
when the Language Manifesto was issued in July, 1900, 
others resigned ; four Senators who voted against pro- 
mulgating the Army Edict were summarily dismissed, and 
in all these cases men were substituted who were more 
subservient, as was believed, to the wishes of the Auto- 
crat. But this reconstruction of the Senate was not 
enough, and on September 30, 1902, ordinances were 
promulgated by order of the Czar, taking away much of 
the authority of that body, and essentially changing the 
government of the country. The old law provided that 
the supreme internal administration of Finland should 
be delegated to the Senate. The new ordinances pro- 
vided that this administration, "within the limits defined 
in the instructions for the Senate, and ordinances apper- 
taining thereto," should be delegated to the Senate 
"under the guidance of its President, the Governor-Gen- 
eral." The Governor-General can now stop the execu- 
tion of any measure until it has been submitted, with his 
observations, to the Emperor. 

The officials attached to the Senate, who were formerly 
nominated by the different divisions of that body, are, 
by the new ordinance to be appointed by the Governor- 
General. The restriction that none but Finnish citizens 



Finland. 177 

may occupy civil posts, is declared not to be applicable in 
the case of native Russians, thus clearly violating the 
promise of Alexander I., and opening the door for a host 
of Russian officials, who are certain to introduce an era 
of Russian corruption. 

The Czar had already appointed Russians to the posi- 
tion of governors of the different provinces in Finland. 
When the Finnish governors declined to co-operate in his 
illegal measures, they were dismissed, and Russians took 
their places in a majority of all the provinces. By the 
new ordinances, the powers of these provincial governors 
were now extended. 

But the most serious evil introduced by these ordi- 
nances was the repeal of the provisions of the former law, 
that the great body of the officials, including the judges, 
could only be removed from office after a judicial trial. 
They can now be removed for various causes; among 
others, "indulging in acts, whether officially or non- 
officially, which are not compatible with their official po- 
sition," and they may be removed by a mere request to 
send in their papers after an explanation is demanded. 
Thus the independence of the judiciary, a body which in 
Finland has always been above reproach, is now swept 
away. The right of the people to address their sovereign 
is practically abolished by a provision that petitions by 
several persons jointly, which aim at a censure of the 
measure of the government, must not be considered by 
the Senate, and can, therefore, not be forwarded to the 
Czar. 

After the adoption of these ordinances, the London 



178 Slav or Saxon. 

Times might truly say that Finland "would be struck off 
the roll of European nations, and degraded to a mere 
province of a semi-oriental Empire," and the Novoe 
Vremya of St. Petersburg might well declare, ' ' Now there 
is only one government in Finland, the Russian Govern- 
ment. . . . There remains for the Finnish Separa- 
tists no alternative but submission." 

The ordinances were published on September 30th, 
and two days later it was announced that nine members 
of the Court of Appeals had been summarily dismissed. 
Their offence consisted in their reply to a circular sent by 
the Military Division of the Senate to obtain certain in- 
formation concerning the application of the Military Ser-' 
vice Law, the information being refused because it was 
based upon an edict which, in their opinion, was illegal. 
The dismissal was made by the Emperor, and the pro- 
cedure prescribed in his own ordinance was not observed, 
since no action was brought against them, nor was any 
explanation demanded. 

The ordinances of September, 1902, provided that no 
action might be brought against an official, unless per- 
mission had been obtained from his superiors. This pro- 
vision was inserted to protect General Kaigorodoff, the 
Russian provincial governor against whom actions had 
been brought by some of the victims of certain Cossack 
outrages on April 18, 1902, and the ordinance had been 
made retroactive for his special benefit. The cases 
against him were ordered to be struck off the list, but the 
court decided that the proceedings should continue, be- 
cause the ordinance was illegally enacted. The Town 



Finland. 179 

Court of Helsingfors was therefore directed to summons 
witnesses, and to undertake a preliminary examination, 
but, by order of the Governor-General and the Senate, a 
placard signed by the chief of police declared that no- 
body should be allowed to enter the court. The public 
prosecutor was excluded, the plaintiff was arrested ; the 
court adjourned the case on account of the absence of 
litigants and witnesses, and on March 24, 1903, sixteen 
members of the Court of Appeal, at Abo, zvere summarily 
dismissed by order from St. Petersburg, Then twenty- 
four more judges and judicial officers were removed, as 
well as the burgomasters of twelve of the most important 
cities and towns of Finland, and in place of the dismissed 
judges young lawyers without experience or character 
were appointed to the vacancies. 

The acts of the Russian Government in the censorship 
and suppression of the press in Finland were tyrannical 
to the last degree; although they were not so direct an 
infringement of the Finnish Constitution as the edicts, 
manifestoes, and ordinances cited above. No regulations 
regarding the press have been adopted in Finland by 
positive law, and such regulations, therefore, fall under the 
category of administrative matters, which the Emperor 
may control through his representative, the Governor- 
General, 

The censorship of the press is more arbitrary in Fin- 
land than in Russia, In the latter country there are two 
forms of censorship : the punitive censorship, where news- 
papers are allowed to appear (as in St, Petersburg and 
Moscow) without previous examination, but if they are 



i8o Slav or Saxon. 

found to contain objectionable articles, their sale may be 
stopped, or they may be suspended, or suppressed with- 
out definite charges or trial. In other parts of the em- 
pire, the preventive censorship prevails, and articles 
cannot be published at all, unless they have been previ- 
ously approved by the censor. But in Finland the two 
systems are combined ; the articles must be first passed 
on by the censor, which involves great delay and trouble, 
and then after the paper is published it may still be sus- 
pended, or suppressed, for publishing what has already 
passed the censor. 

As soon as the Imperial edicts attacking the constitu- 
tion were issued, the suppression and suspension of the 
Finnish newspapers began to come thick and fast. On 
July, 1900, it was announced that the Nya Pressen, the 
champion of Finland's constitutional rights, was sup- 
pressed at the instance of a press censorship committee, 
composed principally of Russian officers. No reasons 
were given. At the same time the editors of two pro- 
vincial papers were forced to resign, and the papers them- 
selves received warnings. 

In February, 1901, it was announced that eleven news- 
papers had been suppressed and thirty-one suspended; 
yet the Moscow Vyedoinosti declares that the Governor- 
General "has not only displayed patience, but a humane, 
and extremely obliging attitude toward the newspaper 
press of Finland. ' ' At the same time the preventive cen- 
sor was very busy. Out of twenty-three numbers of the 
Dagligt Allehanda, fifteen could not be issued in time be- 
cause of the articles rejected. This paper was soon after- 



Finland. i8i 

wards suppressed forever. In October, 1901, it was 
announced that twenty-one newspapers had been sup- 
pressed and forty-two suspended. 

But the suppression of newspapers was only one feat- 
ure of the attempt to stifle political information. The 
Finnish telegraph agency was on July i, 1902, forbidden 
to carry on its business, by arbitrary order. All these 
things were done, although the fundamental laws of Fin- 
land provide that "no man shall be deprived of his 
property, except after due process of law." 

In the beginning of the year 1903, General Bobrikoff 
began to tamper with the secrecy of the post office, 
whereupon the Postmaster-General and the Secretary of 
the Post Office resigned, rather than become parties to 
his arbitrary proceedings. On the occasion of the un- 
veiling of the statue of Lonnrot, who had collected and 
given to the world the national epic of Finland, the 
Kalevala, Bobrikoff required that all the speeches to be 
delivered at the ceremony should be submitted to him, 
and that the national anthem, Our Land, should not be 
sung. The statue, therefore, was reverently and silently 
unveiled, with neither speech nor song. 

The customs authorities now required that all sorts of 
merchandise, not dutiable, were to be examined, since 
books, pamphlets, and newspapers might be hidden 
therein; persons entering Finland were to be searched, 
as well as private yachts, and small craft might be stopped 
even in the open sea. 

At last all pretence of observing the forms of a consti- 
tution was cast aside in an edict promulgated in April, 



1 82 Slav or Saxon. 

1903, making Governor-General Bobrikoff practical dic- 
tator of Finland. This edict provides that : 

It is delegated to the Governor-General: 

A. To take measures for closing, for stated periods, hotels, 
book-stores, and booksellers' shops, and in general all kinds of 
commercial and industrial establishments. 

B. To forbid public and private assemblies of all kinds. 

C. To dissolve private associations and their branches. 

D. To forbid persons whose presence the Governor-General 
may consider injurious to public order and tranquillity to live 
in Finland. 

Persons to be deported might be arrested by the gen- 
darmes and imprisoned until sent to the places designated 
for their destination. The provincial governors might 
decide for what offences the accused should be deprived 
of the right of trial. The municipal organizations were 
to be subject to the immediate supervision of the pro- 
vincial governors, and to the supreme supervision of the 
Governor-General. The instructions for the Governor- 
General provide that "he may close public libraries and 
reading-rooms, as well as printing offices ; may stop the 
dissemination of injurious doctrines, shall have general 
supervision of all teaching establishments, and shall in- 
culcate a spirit of affection toward His Majesty." Where 
it is necessary to take immediate action exceeding the 
authority assigned to the Governor-General, he might 
take such action on his personal responsibility, reporting 
it forthwith to the Emperor. 

It is evident that under these provisions (also promul- 



Finland. 183 

gated without any observance of the forms of law) the 
last vestige of constitutional right is taken away from the 
people. This decree proclaims the Czar the breaker of 
his own oath, and it is hard to see under what circum- 
stances his word, or that of the Russian Government is 
hereafter entitled to belief on any question whatever. 

The work of extinguishing every remnant of liberty 
now began. Schoolmasters were dismissed, the general 
church synod was forbidden to meet without the permis- 
sion of the Governor-General, the people were disarmed 
by a provision prohibiting the sale of firearms, except to 
those licensed to buy them, and worst of all, the work of 
exiling the Finnish patriots was carried on with remorse- 
less activity. Within one week after the publication of 
the Imperial decree came the news that men of the high- 
est distinction in the country had received orders banish- 
ing them from their native land. None of them were 
informed of the offences laid to their charge, or placed in 
a position to defend themselves. Among the first to be 
driven from Finland were Count Carl Mannerheim, a 
lineal descendant of the Count Mannerheim who headed 
the delegation to Alexander I. before he called the Diet 
at Borga, and made oath to maintain the constitution; 
J. Castren, an eminent orator and distinguished member 
of the Finnish bar, who was actually pleading in court 
when the order of expulsion was served on him; W. 
Haglestam, a successful publisher; Baron von Born, 
a large landowner; Mr. Eugene Wolff, spokesman of the 
deputation of Finlanders who went to St. Petersburg in 
1899 to present to the Czar the address of the Finnish 



1 84 Slav or Saxon. 

people; also his younger brother; Mr. Fellman, who 
threw open his house for a meeting of the Finnish law- 
yers ; Eero Erkko, one of the ablest journalists in Finland ; 
and ex-Senator Leo Mechelin, formerly professor of con- 
stitutional law at the Helsingfors University. Most of 
the exiles were members of the Diet. Their houses were 
searched, and they were dogged by detectives until they 
left the country. Pathetic scenes accompanied their de- 
parture ; garlands of flowers were given them, and a silent 
crowd attended them. 

At the end of May, ex-Senator Lennart Gripenberg re- 
ceived the news at Copenhagen that he had been exiled, 
and deprived (as well as ex-Senator Mechelin) of the state 
pension to which he was entitled for his long service. 
Other exiles followed ; among them ex-Senator Nybergh, 
one of the most prominent lawyers of the country, Mr. K. 
Brofeldt, formerly director of a commercial college, and 
Dr. Lyly, who shot himself in Berlin upon receiving the 
news that he could not return to his native land. In 
June, P. J. Aschan was exiled — a country gentleman, 
chairman of the commune where his estate was situated ; 
in July, Mr. Rosendal, a powerful preacher attached to 
the Lyceum in Uleaborg; and later Axel Wahren, a well- 
known landowner, Michael Linden, master of the training 
college and chairman of the municipal council and school 
board of Ekenas, Baron von Troil, Secretary of the Court 
of Appeal at Vasa, and Mr. Aminoff, burgomaster of 
Kasko. In December, 1903, it was announced that four- 
teen more persons had been expelled : among them Count 
Creutz, and his son; Dr. Neovius, formerly editor of the 



Finland, 185 

Nya Pressen; Mr. George Kuhlefelt, formerly burgo- 
master of Lovisa; Mr. Lundenius, judge of the Court 
of Appeal at Abo, — men of unblemished character and 
high standing. The papers were forbidden to publish 
news of these events. Other Finlanders, like Mr. Hal- 
lonblad, burgomaster of Sordavala, were deported to 
Russia, also for unknown reasons, probably in his case 
to gratify a mere personal pique on the part of a pro- 
vincial governor, and all these expulsions were made not- 
withstanding the fact that the penal code of Finland, 
sanctioned by Alexander III. in 1889, provided that exile 
should not be passed as a sentence, nor should it be executed! 

The crushing effect of these tyrannical acts upon the 
spirits of the people can well be imagined. In the words 
of a native Finlander, now an American, "It is like draw- 
ing the veil of the dark ages over their beloved country." 
"For seven hundred years Finns have been free men, 
now they have become Russian serfs." "They can do 
nothing but mourn in silence and mortification, for a 
strict Russian censorship prevents the expression of their 
just indignation and grief," and he quotes the eloquent 
words of Kossuth, "Russia is the rock against which the 
sigh for freedom breaks." 

It is natural that those who have no strong ties to bind 
them to their homes should flee from a land that is thus 
stricken as by a pestilence. The average number of emi- 
grants between 1891 and 1898, before the new regime 
commenced, was 3378, but when the Czar began to de- 
prive the Finnish people of their liberties we find that in 
1899, 12,367 persons left the country ; in 1900, 10,642; in 



1 86 Slav or Saxon. 

1901, 12,659; ^^^ ^^ 1902, 22,266! M. de Plehve, the 
Russian Minister of the Interior, attributes these emigra- 
tions to bad harvests, industrial crises, and the demand 
for labor in foreign lands, but it is unfortunate for his 
contention that the misfortunes of Finland never had 
this effect before. 

What says the Russian Government to the terrible in- 
dictment furnished by these facts? We are not without 
its official answer, for when these violations of the Fin- 
nish Constitution were criticised by Mr. W. T. Stead in 
an "Open Letter" to M. de Plehve, the Russian Minister 
of the Interior and Secretary of State for Finland, M. de 
Plehve sent a reply to the Review of Reviews containing 
a sentence which sounds like a ghastly mockery of the 
proceedings of the government he represents, for he says : 

"The fundamental problem of every supreme authority 
— the happiness and prosperity of the governed — can be 
solved only by the mutual co-operation of the government 
and the people." Later in his argument, however, he dis- 
closes with seeming unconsciousness, the cynicism and 
perfidy of Russian policy, for he observes : 

The initiation of Finland into the historical destinies of the 
Russian Empire was bound to lead to the rise of questions 
calling for a general solution common both to the empire and 
to Finland. Naturally, in view of the subordinate status of the 
latter, such questions could be solved only in the order appointed 
for Impej'ial legislation. At the same time, neither the funda- 
mental laws of the Swedish period of rule in Finland, which 
were cofnpletely incompatible with its new status, nor the Statutes 
of the Diet, introduced by Alexander II. , and determining the 



Finland. 187 

order of issue of local laws, touched, or could touch, the question 
of the issue of general Imperial laws. This question arose in 
the course of the legislative work on the systematization of the 
fundamental laws of Finland. This task, undertaken by order 
of the Emperor Alexander II., for the more precise deter- 
mination of the status of Finland as an indivisible part of our 
state, was continued during the reign of his august successor, 
the Emperor Alexander III., and led to the question of deter- 
mining the order of issue of general Imperial laws. The rules 
drafted for this purpose in 1893 formed the contents of the 
Manifesto of 1899, Thus we see that during six years they 
remained without application, there being no practical necessity 
for their publication. When, however, this necessity arose, owing 
to the lapse of the former military laiv, the Manifesto was issued. 
It was, therefore, the finishing touch to the labor of many 
years at the determination of the manner in which the principle 
of a united empire was to find expression within the limits of 
Finland, and remained substantially true to the traditions which 
for a century had reigned in the relations between Russia and 
Finland. 

This, then, is the authoritative answer of the Russian 
Government to the charge that it has violated its promise ! 
The crushing rejoinder of Mr. Stead is unanswerable: 

For what in substance does M. de Plehve's reply amount 
to ? Briefly this, that the Imperial Government holds as a self- 
evident proposition that in its dealings with its Finnish subjects 
it cannot, in the very nature of things, bind itself by any 
engagement. No matter how precisely the terms of that en- 
gagement may be drawn, or how solemnly they may be attested 
even by the oath of the Emperor himself, it cannot divest 



1 88 Slav or Saxon. 

itself of its inherent right to disregard its promises, to ignore 
its engagements, and to break its Emperor's oath, whenever 
it decides that such a proceeding is necessary for the safety 
and well-being of the empire. This astounding, nay, even 
appalling exposition of the impotence of the Autocrat to guar- 
antee his subjects against the arbitrary exercise of his own 
autocracy, strikes at the very root of Russian credit. . . . 

I fully admit the possibility that a need may have arisen for 
a modification of the relations between Finland and the Rus- 
sian Government. No arrangements either between States or 
individuals can be eternal. Every settlement must be capable 
of revision. So far I go entirely with M. de Plehve. Where 
the point of cleavage comes is that he assumes that the Russo- 
Finnish relations can be rightly revolutionized by an Imperial 
decree without even saying so much as "by your leave" to the 
Finnish Diet. The whole Western world holds that there 
should not have been any recourse to the ultima ratio of force 
majeure until after every effort had been made, and made in 
vain, to secure the assent of the Finns to a modification of the 
laws which, for a hundred years, they have regarded as the 
guarantee of their liberties, rights, and privileges. 

There must indeed be a gulf fixed between Russia and the 
rest of the world if M. de Plehve cannot see that the assertion 
of the inviolable prerogative of the Imperial Government to 
decree on its own sole authority, without consulting the other 
party to the engagement, the annulment or the alteration of the 
fundamental laws of the Finnish people, is utterly fatal to any 
reliance being placed on the solemn engagements of the Russian 
Government. 



CHAPTER XI. 

ARMENIANS — JEWS — RUSSIAN IDEALS. 

The same intolerance which prohibits the people of 
Finland from enjoying their separate political institutions 
also animates the autocracy in the persecution of religious 
dissenters. This intolerance has found its most recent 
expression in the suppression of the Armenian Church 
and in the outrages inflicted upon Russian Jews. 

The Armenian Church is perhaps the oldest religious 
denomination in the Czar's Empire. Generations ago the 
government granted to this church the right to manage 
its own affairs. But within the past few years it was de- 
termined that it must be welded into uniformity with 
Russian Orthodoxy. 

After the accession of Nicholas II., a series of reports 
was prepared for the Czar, in which the wealth and power 
of the Armenian Church was represented as an instru- 
ment, "for keeping alive the spirit of Armenian national- 
ity." The Czar accordingly directed that the church at 
Etchmiadzin, the seat of the Catholicos, or universal head 
of the Christians of the Gregorian rite, should be deprived 
of its revenues, and that these revenues should be used 
for the denationalization of the Armenians. 

189 



IQO Slav or Saxon. 

Chromian, the aged Catholicos, was stripped of his 
power over his flock, and the government determined to 
appoint all the pastors, prelates, and bishops of the Ar- 
menian Church, the abbots of the monasteries, and the 
teachers of the seminaries and denominational schools. 
Naturally, there was great indignation at these arbitrary 
measures. The Catholicos refused the allowance offered 
to him by the government, but when the congregations 
within his jurisdiction attempted to raise the money 
needed by voluntary gifts, the government confiscated in 
the post office the contributions sent for this purpose 
through the mails. 

On September 12, 1903, just before the church property 
was transferred to the government, a mass was celebrated 
by the Armenian priests in the cathedral of Tiflis, in the 
presence of about two thousand persons. Father Aratoff 
uttered an anathema against the Russian Government for 
the seizure of the property of the church, and a turbulent 
demonstration followed. Three days later disorders 
broke out at Baku, troops fired upon the crowd and sev- 
eral were wounded. Similar disorders were reported in 
other places, and later it was announced that large num- 
bers of the clergy were being banished, and that the gov- 
ernment was hurrying troops to the Caucasus in fear of 
an outbreak. 

The conduct of the government of the Czar toward his 
5 Hebrew subjects has aroused the indignation of the civi- 
> lized world. The Jews have held in Russia up to the 
5 present time much the same position that they held in 
I Western Europe during the Middle Ages. They are al- 



Armenians — Jews — Russian Ideals. 191 

lowed to worship in their own way, so long as they do 
not attempt to make proselytes, but they are placed 
under special legislation. More than a thousand articles 
of the Russian law relate to Jews only, and even these 
laws differ in different parts of the empire. Jews are 
subject to all the burdens of orthodox Russians, but they 
have not the same rights. They are shut up like the pest 
within certain specified territories, such as Poland and a 
few adjoining provinces, and even in these districts there 
are tracts where they cannot reside. For instance, they 
may not live within fifty versts from the frontier, lest they 
engage in smuggling. They are generally forbidden to 
live in villages or to settle outside of towns or cities. 
Yet even in places where they may live there are many 
industries they cannot follow. They are generally in- 
capable of holding public office. They are required to 
serve in the army, but they are not allowed to become 
officers. They cannot purchase lands, nor farm them, 
nor fill the post of bailiff or steward. They can loan 
money to the peasants, but cannot foreclose their mort- 
gages. It was decreed in 1887 that no gymnasium should 
receive more than ten per cent, of Jewish students, even 
where the Jewish population was a quarter to a third of 
the whole. The percentage of Jews permitted to study 
law or medicine is ridiculously small. 

The first years of the reign of Alexander III. were 
marked by riots against the Jews. The Russian press 
commenced the agitation against them, declaring that they 
were foreign excrescences upon the body politic, living 
upon the misfortunes of others ; dirty mangy wretches, 



192 Slav or Saxon. 

who grew rich and fat upon usury and oppression, and 
that some of them had been conspirators against Alexan- 
der II., and had brought him to his death. Under such 
goading, riots broke out simultaneously in many cities 
upon a preconcerted plan, and the railroads brought the 
agitators to the towns marked for the outbreaks. Re- 
ports were spread of an Imperial ukase commanding the 
people to beat and plunder the Jews. The police and 
the troops were indifferent, and for days violent outrages 
were allowed to go on without interference. Jews who 
attempted to defend themselves were disarmed and ar- 
rested, and prosecuted for carrying arms. The houses of 
the Jews were given up to pillage. In the single town 
of Balta more than a thousand houses were sacked ; and 
synagogues and tombs were desecrated. At last the 
government interfered, and some of the mischief-makers 
were apprehended. Most of them were finally dis- 
charged, and the penalties inflicted were slight. But the 
communities where these outrages occurred afterwards 
suffered, for when the Jews were ruined, there were no 
purchasers for farm products, and where the large shops 
were destroyed, prices rose inordinately. 

Things at last sank back into the old way again, and 
many of the obnoxious provisions of the laws against the 
Jews were neglected and evaded by corrupt ofificials. But 
from that time to this they have been subjected at inter- 
vals to persecutions more or less severe. Finally in the 
spring of 1903 an outrage occurred at Kishineff which 
shocked the world. The local newspaper of this town, 
Bessarabets by name, published, with the approval of the 



Armenians — Jews — Russian Ideals. . 193 

censor, the vice-governor of the province, a series of 
atrocious falsehoods. The Jews, it was said, had killed 
a Christian boy and drunk his blood, had murdered a 
priest, and desecrated a church of the orthodox Chris- 
tians. The ignorant Russian peasants were greatly in- 
censed by these statements. Accordingly, on the 19th 
of April, more than a thousand of the inhabitants of 
Kishineff made a murderous attack upon the defenceless 
Jews. It lasted for two days, fifty Jews were killed and 
more than four hundred wounded. Outrages were com- 
mitted on defenceless Jewish women and girls. Fifteen 
hundred houses and five hundred shops and factories 
were wrecked and looted, and property was destroyed to 
the value of nearly a million dollars. Seven months 
afterwards, thirty-nine persons, out of eight hundred and 
sixteen arrested, were brought to trial for participating in 
these outrages. The testimony showed that the com- 
mandant of the Kishineff garrison had an available force 
of five thousand soldiers, and could have stopped the 
rioting at once, but he had received no orders to do so. 
Army and police officers were present in the streets dur- 
ing the rioting, but refused to interfere, "because they 
had received no orders." The police were informed two 
weeks before of circular letters instigating the riot, but 
did nothing. During the riots, the chief of police de- 
clared that the Jews must look out for themselves — "we 
can't help them." During the first day of the riot, the 
governor, von Raaben, was personally informed of the 
outrages by Dr. Miller, regimental surgeon Dr. Muchink, 
chairman of the Jewish Relief Committee, and others, and 



194 • 5'/<a;z/ or Saxon. 

asked to give the Jews protection, but Baron Levendahl, 
the high officer of the secret police from St. Petersburg, 
who had recently arrived in Kishineff, called on him, and 
evidently dissuaded him from putting a stop to the riot, 
for he did not leave his house during the two days of 
disorder. The soldiers went to the assistance not of the 
Jews but of the rioters, and shared in the loot. The 
rioters declared they had been authorized to attack the 
Jews by the Holy Synod, — that they had orders from 
the higher authorities. 

The bodies of the dead showed that they had often 
been subjected to prolonged tortures; they were maimed 
and disfigured; heads crushed, ears cut off, iron pins 
driven into the nose, and the body of one was cut open 
and filled with feathers. 

The surgeon in the city hospital, who wrote an account 
of these things for a Russian newspaper, was removed 
from his position. 

On the trial of the case, on December 8, 1903, the 
counsel for the Jews, and some of the counsel for the 
rioters, united in asking the court to summon Governor 
von Raaben, and the chief of police, and push the ques- 
tion of responsibility for these riots, which evidently be- 
longed to a higher power. But the court refused to allow 
the governor or the chief to be summoned, whereupon 
ten of the counsel for the Jews and five of the counsel 
for the rioters abandoned their cases and withdrew from 
the court -room. In support of this demand for testi- 
mony, Advocate Karabchefski said: "Imagine, your 
honors, that you are Roman judges, and that you are 



Armenians — jFews — Russian Ideals. 195 

called upon to decide the question who is to blame, 
Herod or the men who obeyed his orders." Karab- 
chefski was sent to Siberia for five years, by order of M. 
de Plehve, Minister of the Interior. 

Governor von Raaben and the chief of police must have 
been in communication with St. Petersburg during the 
riots ; the responsibility must rest somewhere close to the 
Imperial throne, and while the question, "Who was 
Herod?" cannot be so definitely answered as to decide 
whether it was the Holy Synod or the Minister of the 
Interior himself, the darkest criminality must inevitably 
be imputed to a government, which made the trial a 
secret one, and excluded the only evidence which could 
exonerate it from guilty participation in the crime. 

Announcements are often made of important adminis- 
trative reforms in contemplation by the government, and 
indeed something has been done in this direction. For 
instance, the Siberian exile system has been abolished, so 
far as common criminals are concerned, though it is still 
retained with respect to political offenders. But most of 
the old abuses of administration still continue. "Politi- 
cally untrustworthy" subjects are arrested, imprisoned, 
deprived of their property, and banished to remote parts 
of the country, without trial or hearing. Considerable 
numbers of the more prominent authors, editors, and 
publishers, are thus deported. Among them Mr. Kennan 
names "Vorontsof, the political economist; Lessevitch, 
the philosopher; Annenski, the statistician; Panteleief 
and Kalmikova, two well - known publishers ; Peter 
Struve, grandson of the famous astronomer ; four 



196 Slav or Saxon. 

members of the Russian Free Economic Society; Mr. 
Phillipof, editor of the Scientific Review,'" etc. The 
suppression of periodicals and newspapers continues. 
Punishments are imposed by arbitrary authority, without 
warrant of law. For instance : after the agrarian disorder 
in Poltava, in 1902, the governor, Belgardt, caused more 
than four hundred peasants to be flogged with whips, 
each of the victims receiving from 120 to 170 blows; and 
Governor von Wahl caused to be flogged, in the same 
way, sixteen peasants — mostly factory operatives — who 
had taken part in a *' labor-day" demonstration in the 
city of Wilna. 

The arbitrary measures of the government are well 
summarized by Mr. Kennan, in a recent article in The 
Outlook, as follows : 

The government compels peasants whose houses have 
burned down to wait months for official permission to rebuild ; 
it reprimands citizens who unite in a joint telegram to the 
Minister of Public Instruction, on the ground that collective 
action of that kind is strictly forbidden; it will not allow 
school-teachers to give to the press any information with re- 
gard to schools, education, or economic condition of the 
peasants; it prohibits everywhere public celebrations of the 
twenty-fifth anniversary of the emancipation of the serfs; it 
will not permit university students to celebrate anything, nor 
participate in public testimonials to esteemed persons ; it draws 
up the programme for, and superintends the proceedings of, 
every convention of business men who meet to consider and 
discuss their own interests; it forbids town councils to give 
the name of Gogol, Pushkin, or Turgenieff to any of their 



Armenians — Jews — Russian Ideals. 197 

newly established municipal schools; it arbitrarily closes the 
statistical bureaus of the zemstvos and burns their statistics; 
it suppresses without process of law such organizations as 
the "Russian Free Economic Society," the St. Petersburg 
"Society for Furnishing Reading to the Poor and Sick," and 
the Elizavetgrad " Society for the Promotion of Literary and 
Technical Knowledge"; it forbids the giving of an entertain- 
ment to be called a " Turgenieff Evening," on the novelist's 
birthday and in his native town; it will not permit the execu- 
tive boards of the zemstvos to consult one another, nor to 
establish a periodical devoted to their collective interests; it 
has taken away from these organizations the right to care for 
the people in time of famine; and it has just stopped all the 
statistical work of the zemstvos in twelve provinces, and given 
governors discretionary power to stop it in twenty-two more. 

It is not, therefore, surprising that the Minister of Jus- 
tice reports that the number of cases of political crime, 
as well as the number of persons implicated therein, are 
increasing generally, and with incredible swiftness. 

The foregoing facts show us that, if we may judge of 
the future by the past, the extension of Russian power 
means the forcible suppression of all national and personal 
individuality and liberty, and the welding of all races, peo- 
ples, and religions under Russian rule into one uniform 
mass. 

Poland, Finland, Armenia, and the Russian Jews fur- 
nish the types of the system by which Russia governs 
those subject peoples who are reluctant to forsake their 
faith, their language, and their laws, and yield to the un- 
limited power asserted by the Autocrat, over their bodies, 



198 Slav or Saxon. 

their souls, and their possessions. And the same fate lies 
in store for all other peoples over whom Russia seeks to 
extend her dominions, whether they be Bulgarians, 
Turks, Persians, Afghans, Indians, Manchurians, Kore- 
ans, or Chinese. Every nationality, every creed, every 
race must be forced into a Procrustean bed, which may 
be of a size and shape appropriate to the Russian mou- 
zhik, but which requires for others, in some cases, 
stretching, but more frequently the lopping off of a foot 
or a leg, when occupied by those of higher civilization 
and greater intellectual powers. 

Not only is this grim policy of "Russification" shown 
by her conduct, it is boldly declared by her leading men — 
journalists, officials, and statesmen — to be the consumma- 
tion toward which her domination tends, and a "consum- 
mation devoutly to be wished." These Russian ideals 
have been set forth by perhaps the most distinguished rep- 
resentative of the autocracy, M. Pobyedonostseff, Procu- 
rator of the Holy Synod, in The Reflections of a Russian 
Statesman, containing essays on "The New Democracy," 
"Trial by Jury," "The Press," "The Ideals of Un- 
belief," "Power and Authority," etc. He denounces 
democratic government as unnatural, and declares that it 
cannot permanently succeed ; it pretends to be the rule 
of the people, and is in fact the rule of a few selfish, cor- 
rupt politicians, resulting in the constant diffusion of 
power and increase of license until respect for authority 
is destroyed, and the country falls into anarchy, or under 
the tyranny of some adventurer. The Church too be- 
comes divided into an infinite number of sects ; endless 



Armenians — Jews — Russian Ideals. 199 

disputes and new interpretations demolish the founda- 
tions of faith, and lead the world to atheism. To bring 
back order into the world, both civil and religious, is the 
mission of Russia. When the rest of mankind shall have 
grown weary of spiritual conflicts, she will restore their 
faith, and when the political world shall have lapsed into 
hopeless confusion, her rule alone will bring order out of 
chaos. 

To do all this she must of course become the dominant 
power, and this she will be. In the words of Mr. Bev- 
eridge : 

To the Russian mind, China is to be Russian, Persia is to 
be Russian, India is to be Russian. It is Russian power 
which is to restore the cross to Jerusalem. It is Holy Russia 
that is to bring the authority of his faith to the land where the 
Saviour of mankind walked and taught and was crucified. So 
thinks the Russian. 

And in his interview with Pobyedonostseff, the latter 
said : "You refer to Russia as a state. No ! no ! Russia 
is no state, Russia is a world ! " 

This [adds Mr. Beveridge] was the voice of the soul of 
Russia — Russia that ever waits, Russia that is ever patient, 
Russia that ever advances, Russia that never hurries, Russia 
that looks upon other peoples as disorganized communities 
and dying races and considers herself the heir of all the ages, 
Russia that believes and feels that she is not a state, but c 
world. 



CHAPTER XII. 

OUR OWN INTEREST AND DUTY. 

If neither the Russians nor the Japanese shall become 
predominant in China, the probable alternative seems to 
be a partition of the Chinese Empire among several of 
the Great Powers. It is evident that unless Chinese insti- 
tutions are invigorated from some external source, China 
is likely to fall a prey in the near or distant future to some 
or perhaps all of these Powers. 

A few years ago the dismemberment of China was pro- 
ceeding at a rapid rate. Korea was made independent ; 
Formosa was taken by Japan, Manchuria by Russia, the 
Shantung peninsula by Germany, and Wei-hai-wei by 
England, Besides the actual occupation of these terri- 
tories, certain "spheres of influence" were recognized: 
those of Russia and Germany in the north, that of Japan 
near the coast of Formosa, and of France near Tonquin, 
and that of Great Britain (contested by Germany) in the 
valley of the Yang-tse-kiang. The bulk of China already 
seems to be within the "sphere of influence" of some one 
or more of the powers, and there is ground for apprehen- 
sion that these "spheres of influence" may some time 
hereafter become absolute possessions. 



Our Own Interest and Duty. 201 

It is hard to estimate how immense would be the loss 
to American commerce if there should be a partition of 
the Celestial Empire.- So long as the Chinese territory- 
remains intact, either independent or under the control 
of a nation whose policy it is to encourage free competi- 
tion in commerce, the position of America in respect to 
China is far better than the position of any other power. 
We can produce most things in America cheaper than 
they can be produced anywhere else in the world, and 
since our route to China by sea is far shorter than that of 
any European nation, we can transport these goods to 
China more cheaply than any European country can 
transport its products. In the natural course of trade, if 
America shows equal enterprise with other powers (and 
we can hardly doubt that American energy and adapta- 
bility will reach that point), we ought to control three 
fourths, perhaps nine tenths, of the Chinese foreign 
trade. When China awakens, its trade is bound to be 
immense. Our exports to China recently aggregated 
about $40,000,000 annually ; our exports to Great Britain 
and Ireland at the same time were about $530,000,000, 
while China has ten times the population of the United 
Kingdom. The Chinese demand for our products is cer- 
tain to increase with the ability to buy, and there seems 
to be no limit to our future trade except the restrictions 
which may be imposed by the Chinese Government, or 
such other governments as may take its place in the 
control of Chinese territory. 

We still need to do many things, it is true, in order to 
win this Chinese market. Oriental ship lines must be con- 



202 Slav or Saxon. 

structed , banking institutions ought to be established in 
every port ; our consular service should be improved ; rail- 
roads should be constructed under American auspices; 
our flag, as well as our commercial enterprises, ought to 
be always in evidence. It is hard to estimate how effec- 
tive is the visible symbol of our national power, and the 
presence of American fleets, both naval and mercantile, in 
developing our trade. We are extremely fortunate in the 
possession of the Philippine Islands at this stage of our 
career. These give us important interests of our own in 
the neighborhood of China, and keep our attention fixed 
in that direction. Chinese trade is certain to come to us 
so long as our opportunities to acquire it are unrestricted, 
but if China should fall into the possession of the Rus- 
sian autocracy, or should be divided among European 
powers, we would find that our natural advantages would 
be of little benefit. 

The predominance of Japan in China would interfere 
with the growth of our commerce less than the predomi- 
nance of any other power except England, perhaps less 
than that of England herself. Japan is an island empire, 
and essentially a commercial power. She cannot pro- 
duce many of the articles required by China. She has 
always been friendly to the principle of the "open door," 
and is bound by motives of interest to be more friendly 
to that principle than any other power except England, 
perhaps more friendly than England. For it must not 
be forgotten that the reasons for England's support of 
free trade, and of equal commercial opportunities for all, 
depend upon conditions which are largely disappearing. 



Our Own Interest and Duty. 203 

England was the great manufacturer as well as the carrier 
of the world, but she produced few raw materials. Free 
commerce enabled her to outbid her competitors. But 
to-day the inventive genius and organizing ability of 
Americans have brought our own nation to the front, 
enabling us to compete with England not only in the 
markets of the world, but even in her own territories in 
respect to many of her most important products. 

The recent agitation in Great Britain, commenced by 
Mr. Chamberlain, may be the beginning of a change in 
English policy in respect to free trade and the "open 
door," and it may well be doubted, if Great Britain should 
acquire an exclusive interest in a large part of the Chinese 
Empire, whether the United States would always be al- 
lowed to share the commerce of that territory upon equal 
terms with herself. As to France, Germany, and, most 
of all, Russia, there can be no doubt at all that the ulti- 
mate efforts of these powers would be to exploit their 
own territories for the benefit of their own people to the 
exclusion of our commerce. They are all devoted to the 
protective policy, and however willing they might be to 
concede equal privileges to others as a means of acquiring 
a foothold upon Chinese territory, it is certain that sooner 
or later they will try to monopolize the commerce of their 
own possessions for themselves. Russia is the most ex- 
clusive of all. She regards herself not as a nation, but as 
a world. She contains within herself all possible re- 
sources including all the raw materials necessary for 
her commercial independence. Within the last twenty 
years her industrial enterprises have progressed rapidly 



204 Slav or Saxon. 

under a high protective tariff; indeed they have been 
forced too quickly for the growth to be altogether sound. 
Russian tariffs have been adjusted for the purpose of en- 
abling Russia to manufacture everything her people use. 
She cannot manufacture on equal terms with England 
and America, therefore she must protect herself from 
competition by high tariffs. 

It may be said that Russia has promised in Manchuria 
to uphold the principle of the "open door," but Russian 
promises have not been of such efficacy in other matters 
as to lead to an implicit reliance upon them. She exerted 
her influence to prevent the making of our recent commer- 
cial treaty with China. She endeavored to prevent the 
opening of Korean ports. Her intrigues sought to prevent 
the establishment of American consulates in the three ports 
of Manchuria to which consuls have been recently sent. 

But her promises in respect to the "open door" might 
be fulfilled to the letter and yet America could acquire 
very little commerce in those parts of the Chinese Em- 
pire dominated by Russia, for the interior of the country 
would have to be reached over railways controlled by 
Russia ; discriminating rates upon these railways would 
be quite as effectual a bar as discriminating duties. 

When Russia made her agreement with China for the 
construction of the Manchurian railway, she provided 
that goods entering Manchuria by this railway should be 
subject to duties one third less than those entering at 
seaports, and that as to such goods all likin taxes, levied 
by the local Chinese authorities for leave to transport 
merchandise across local territories, should be relin- 



Our Own Interest and Duty. 205 

quished. Russia has secured a monopoly in respect to 
the internal trade of Manchuria. And even if she should 
now give us equal treatment with herself as well as with 
others on the sea-board, she could maintain that mo- 
nopoly by establishing prohibitory freight rates on her 
railways. 

The Department of State, realizing the importance of 
this kind of discrimination, on September, 1899, through 
our several ambassadors and ministers, sent communi- 
cations to the governments of the various countries 
claiming "spheres of interest" in China, asking for a 
declaration of the following principles: 

First. — The recognition that no power will in any way inter- 
fere with any treaty port or any vested interest within any 
leased territory or within any so-called " sphere of interest " 
it may have in China. 

Second. — That the Chinese treaty tariff of the time being 
shall apply to all merchandise landed at or shipped to all such 
ports as are within said " sphere of interest " (unless they be 
" free ports "), no matter to what nationality it may belong, 
and that duties so leviable shall be collected by the Chinese 
Government. 

Third. — That it will levy no higher harbor dues on vessels 
of another nationality frequenting any port in such " sphere " 
than shall be levied on vessels of its own nationality, and no 
higher railroad charges over lines built^ controlled^ or operated 
within its "sphere," on merchandise belonging to citizens or 
subjects of other nationalities transported through such 
" sphere," than shall be levied on similar merchandise belong- 
ing to its own nationals transported over equal distances. 



2o6 Slav or Saxon. 

The answer of Count Mouravieff, Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, to our ambassador, dated December 30, 1899, is 
as follows: 

In so far as the territory leased by China to Russia is con- 
cerned, the Imperial Government has already demonstrated 
its firm intention to follow the policy of " the open door " by 
creating Dalny (Talien-wan) a free port; and if at some future 
time that port, although remaining free itself, should be sepa- 
rated by a customs limit from other portions of the territory in 
question, the customs duties would be levied, in the zone sub- 
ject to the tariff, upon d\\ foreign merchandise without dis- 
tinction as to nationality. 

As to the ports now opened or hereafter to be opened to 
foreign commerce by the Chinese Government, and which lie 
beyond the territory leased to Russia, the settlement of the 
question of customs duties belongs to China herself, and the 
Imperial Government has no intention whatever of claiming 
any privileges for its own subjects to the exclusion of other 
foreigners. 

It is easy to see that in this answer Russia stipulates 
nothing (except as to Dalny) which impairs her right to 
exclude us from the leased territory, and that she stipu- 
lates nothing whatever in regard to differential freight 
rates. According to the terms of her own statement, she 
may exclude us absolutely from every point which must 
be reached by transportation over lines which now exist 
and over those which may hereafter be constructed. 

It will undoubtedly be to the policy of Russia to ex- 



Our Otvn Interest and Duty. 207 

elude American imports, whenever they compete with 
Russian goods. Should the Chinese Empire fall under 
the control of Russia, American commerce with that em- 
pire would soon become practically extinct. What would 
this mean to us? The question is forcibly stated in an 
article appearing in the Problems of the Pacific, a publica- 
tion of the American Asiatic Association, on December 
24, 1903. 

If the extension of the influence of the United States has 
been anywhere pursued in obedience to the call of " manifest 
destiny," it has been on and around the Pacific Ocean. If 
there be one point more than another where a check to our 
influence would dwarf the role which this republic is fitted to 
play on the stage of history, it would be here. And yet our 
people have seen, perhaps without adequate conception of its 
significance, certainly without emphatic protest, the gradual 
maturing of a policy in Eastern Asia whose consummation 
must nullify any advantage we possess on the Pacific, and 
render meaningless every effort we have made to confirm our 
influence as the greatest of Pacific powers. The policy is not 
exclusively Russian, though Russia is for the present its most 
aggressive exponent. It has unquestionably the sanction of 
Germany and the sympathy of France. It aims at nothing less 
than the partition of the most populous of empires and the 
richest of all the unexploited regions of the earth among the 
Great Powers of Europe, to the destruction of all the rights of 
trade which we have acquired by treaty with that empire, and 
to the exclusion for all time of our influence and enterprise from 
the gigantic and immensely profitable undertaking of equip- 
ping China with the appliances and supplying it with the 



2o8 Slav or Saxon. 

products of modern civilization. ... If the Russian flag is 
to float from the capital city of Manchuria, without protest or 
warning from the United States, what possible reason shall we 
have to allege against its floating over Pekin; against the 
creation of a German protectorate over Shan-tung and the ad- 
joining provinces north of the Yangtsze; against the marking 
out of a zone of French influence from the frontier of Tong- 
king to the head waters of the Brahmaputra? If the first steps 
do not concern us, neither do the further steps nor the inevi- 
table end. If the United States is not prepared to announce 
to the world that it must regard the Russian seizure of Man- 
churia as an "unfriendly act," then it confesses that the parti- 
tion of China may go on without other than diplomatic protest 
from its government, or other than stolid indifference on the 
part of its people. Meanwhile we should be playing the some- 
what ridiculous part of devoting all our strength and resources 
to the opening of an ocean gateway to Asia while its land 
portals were being slammed in our faces. 

But the interests involved in the question of Chinese 
commerce, important as they are, are not so vital as the 
far-reaching political questions connected with Russia's 
aspirations for supremacy in the Chinese Empire. If her 
predominance in Korea and Manchuria be once assured, 
there is nothing but the forcible resistance of some other 
power, or powers, that will stand in the way of her 
gradual encroachments upon the rest of that empire. 
Her domination of China will insure at some time, more 
or less remote, her supremacy in the Eastern continent, 
and what that means to the future of mankind has been 
already shown. 



Our Own Interest and Duty. 209 

To all nations that stand for civil liberty — nay to all 
men who take thought for the future of humanity — the 
duty is imperative to join together and stay the aggres- 
sions of the colossal empire whose conquests threaten 
more lasting calamity to the essentials of our civilization 
than did the irruption of the barbarian hordes to the 
civilization of ancient Rome; an empire whose universal 
dominion will bring into history the Dark Ages of the 
future — ages tenfold more hopeless than those out of 
which Europe has for many centuries been struggling 
toward the light. 

Our interest in the Eastern Question may seem remote. 
We are so far from the scene of the struggle that it looks 
to us as though the consequences could never reach us. 
But if the Eastern continent, containing nearly the whole 
population of the globe, should become subject to the 
iron yoke of autocratic rule, would this be the end ? 
Would there be any limit to the aggressions of despot- 
ism ? 

Most valuable perhaps of the fruits of our war with 
Spain has been the strengthening of the ties between 
ourselves and the one country of the old world that was 
capable of recognizing our motives for the struggle — the 
one country with which we ought to be united by bonds 
of sympathy and common interest, as well as of blood, 
language, and common institutions. England and Amer- 
ica are now warm friends. Now is the golden moment 
to see that this friendship is made permanent and indis- 
soluble. Let us not shrink from the union that is open 
to us with the most enlightened, the most humane, and 



210 Slav or Saxon. 

the most faithful of the great powers of the earth. The 
warning of Washington against entangling alliances was 
not intended to prevent the cementing of such a union, 
in such a cause, and at such a period in our history. It 
may be wise to keep the child at home, safe from the 
contamination and dangers of the street, but after the boy 
has become a man, he must fight his battle in the world, 
and isolation is no longer desirable nor possible. 

England once stood at our side in defending the 
Western hemisphere against the encroachments of 
the " Holy Alliance." Let us now be ready to do our 
part for the protection of our common civilization. The 
mere existence of a powerful alliance will go far to remove 
the dangers against which it is directed. 

Let us unite with England and Japan in insisting that 
Chinese markets shall be open to every nation upon equal 
terms, that the arteries of Chinese commerce shall be con- 
trolled by those only who will uphold this policy of the 
" open door," and that not another foot of Chinese terri- 
tory shall ever be ceded to Russia or to any power that 
will close it against the world. A treaty guaranteeing the 
integrity of the Chinese Empire will be of inestimable 
service, not only to ourselves but to mankind. 



QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 

75 — A Brief History of Panics, and their Periodical Occurrence in 
the United States. By Clement Juglar. Translated b)' De 
CouRCEY W. Thom. Octavo i oo 

76 — Industrial Arbitration and Conciliation. By Josephine Shaw 
Lowell. Paper, 40 cents ; cloth ...... 75 

77 — Primary Elections. A Study of Methods for Improving the Basis of 
Party Organization. By Daniel S. Remsen . . . . 75 

79 — Joint-Metallism. By Anson Phelps Stokes. Fifth edition, i 00 

80 — " Common Sense " Applied to Woman Suffrage. By Mary 
Putnam-Jacobi, M.D. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth . . . i 00 

82 — A Sound Currency and Banking System. How it may be Secured. 
By Allen .Ripley Foote. Cloth 75 

83 — Natural Taxation. By Thomas G. Shearman. Cloth . i 00 

84 — Real Bi-Metallism ; or. True Coin versus False Coin. By Everett 
P. Wheeler. Illustrated. Paper, 40 cents ; cloth . . 75 

85 — Congressional Currency. By A. C. Gordon. Cloth . . i 2s 

86 — Money and Prices. By J. Schoenhof, author of "Economy of 
High Wages," etc. Cloth . . . . . . ' . i 50 

87 — America and Europe. By Wells, Phelps, and Schurz . 75 

88 — The War of the Standards. By Judge Albion W. Tourgee. 
Paper, 40 cents ; cloth ........ 75 

89 — A General Freight and Passenger Post. By James L. Cowles. 
Third edition, revised. Cloth, 1.25 ; paper .... 50 

90 — Municipal Reform. By Thomas C. Devlin . . . r 00 

91 — Monetary Problems and Reform. By Chas. H. Swan, Jr. 75 

92 — The Proposed Anglo-American Alliance. By Charles A. Gard- 
iner. Paper . . . . . . . . .25 

93 — Our Right to Acquire and Hold Foreign Territory. By Charles 
A. Gardiner. Paper . . . . . 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
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